The story of Antoine Dodson, the young man who unintentionally made a fool of himself in front of media camera's by expressing his anger about an intruder in his home that was attempting to rape his sister, is just one example of how people are making fortunes these days.
For Antoine, all it took was a bad hair day, a gay swag, bad grammar and an attitude to take him from a real messed up situation into becoming an overnight sensation. Since the news report of Dodson hit the net, the video has received millions and millions of views; a song has been made recomposing his voice and has been downloaded from itunes more than 30,000 times, and from it all, he has managed to escape the projects and buy a house, start an online business and capitalize from dolls that look like him and more.
Although Dodson is now making the kind of money that he desperately needed to get him out of the slumps, it was obvious from the beginning that Antoine was being “laughed at” for being somewhat less than intelligent. The sad part is that it's the type of qualities and behaviors that he posses that has been the center of success for quite a few people.
Another example is a female who goes by the name of Kat Stacks. Her name manages to stay a trending topic on the social networking site twitter because she constantly exposes her alleged sexual encounters with celebrities via her youtube channel. If not her, then others who choose to get in on the hype by slapping her up on camera for being a slut; chestising her for being out of control, or filming her sloppy drunk.
It doesn't matter that most people find Stacks' behavior ill mannered and disgusting; the fact that hype draws curiousity and attention; drama is entertaining and what most are looking for, and the mere act of a person embarrasing themselves is what the majority wants to see, is enough to generate the number of views to her videos she sets out to accomplish. The funny part is, whether good or bad, someone always follows up with opinionated commentary to make her efforts to recieve attention more of a success. She's said it time and time again, she doesn't care what anyone thinks, because in the end, “I'm getting paid.”
Montana Fishburne, the daughter of actor Lawrence Fishburne is example number three. She follows closely behind Kat Stacks by playing the role of seeming rather unintelligent. Montana recently went public about doing a XXX video, and while Kat Stacks' excuse is said to be mental, Montana's excuse is that becoming a porn star has allegedly always been her dream.
For one, at 18 years old, Montana hasn't lived that long, so just how long is “always?” For two, to repeatedly make that claim only makes it suspect that she's covering for the people who actually exposed her. Nasty as she may be, surely her dream was more than likely a bought one. However, the point is this: by speaking out about it all for no good reason and publicly humiliating herself, Montana and her comrades are making a nice little chunk sum of money.
Can't you see a pattern here? Once nobody, now somebody, all by just being an embarrassment. Is this the only way to get paid these days without doing something illegal?
We can go on and on about the stunts people pull for attention (from the girl fights to the gang fights), and the things the media plays on, and everything in between. All in the effort to drive crazy traffic and make money.
Celebrities are not exempt either, they're probably some of the biggest liars! This is especially true when it comes time for one of their albums to drop, or one of their movies to debut. They lead the public on in ridiculous ways to get us talking and keep the attention on themselves, and at times it's just so disrespectful…
