Despite the clever way she edited Loren’s hat to magically jump back when he discusses puppetry, Melissa is not a professional film editor and thus you should not blame her New York camera man Chris Cavs for her shortfalls in editing.
I was a little nervous before this interview, after all, the character Loren Feldman portrays in his satirical parody blog at 1938 Media is more than a little vicious and has been called a bigot a bully and downright evil. I wasn’t sure I was ready for what was coming.
The morning of the interview I had thought up a myriad of arguments Loren and I would have during our interview in New York’s Central Park, if Loren wanted a fight, I was going to be prepared. I was so prepared for our jousting match that it was a little bit of a let down when I met the man, but I didn’t really notice the let down at first as I was too busy heaving a sigh of relief. He was nice, he was charming, he was alive with possibility in all the ways good people are. Don’t get me wrong, he still had a very strong personality, but he wasn’t the character I had come to expect from his blog. Thank God.
Regardless if you think it’s satirical genius or tasteless drivel, 1938 Media’s brand of in your face, envelope pushing parody and satire is a very interesting study of the dynamic shift in expectation we have with regard to authenticity and personal interaction online. At some point we have stopped expecting that brands would market for and produce content that was true to the brand itself and have little to do with the people who produce it. Instead we have pushed the envelope so much in the direction of transparency and full disclosure that we expect many entrepreneurs online to use their personalities as a commodity, to use themselves as a "personal brand". It’s one of the many reason’s why what Loren does throws so many of us for a loop. His juxtiposition to the 1938 Media brand has exemplified (for me at least) that it is still possible to be a person without being a "personal brand".
Which brings me to a frustrated phrase I hear quite often from my coaching clients:
"but I am not my day job."
I wonder, how long that will still ring true for people as we integrate our personal and professional lives online…
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This post is tagged "1938 media", "I am not my day job", "loren feldman", "personal branding", authenticity, creativity, fighting, melissa pierce, puppetry
3 Comments
Hi Melissa. I enjoyed this interview and have commented as such on 1938media. As a personal aside, I would have liked to hear your voice as clearly as we hear Loren’s in the video. I take the view that the interviewer is as much the subject of an interview as the interviewee. But that’s just me.
In response to “I am not my day job”…
If you experience your day job as another one of life’s burdens then it’s of little surprise that you’d want to break free from it at all costs. But when you’re undeniably passionate about what you do, boundaries between work and play no longer apply. That is not to say that life should be forever sedate and without respite, but it does mean that you begin to embody your work and exude its qualities as your abilities develop.
Andrew,
Thanks for the feedback about hearing my voice, I let it sneak in a bit in the blog, but in the documentary all my questions will be edited out – although I will probably be narrating. We’ll see how it goes.
As far as Day Job… spot on common sense, you’d think we all would intuitively know that, however I’ve found that many people operate so far from what they “know in their heart” that they expect that their job will be a horrible burden. On the flip of that coin, even if you love what you do, like in Loren’s case, It doesn’t have to be your everything.
Cheers, Melissa
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