For my first reflection, I will be going over my overall experience at Squamish Valley Music Festival in 2014.
This day in question, is the one day where I actually felt like I was a celebrity. There were a total of six of us out in the summer heat (30 degrees celsius) and practically every second crowd we passed made some kind of comment. People constantly wanted to take pictures with us and especially me with the flower beard. The comments in particular were usually "Nice suits!" or commented on my flower beard. Above all the main thing that was said to us, however, was "You must be hot in those suits." That line about us being so crazy to wear is now an inside joke in my friend base because it was said so many times.
Now going back to when I said that I've never felt like a celebrity more than I did that day. I truly did, as in by halfway through the day I was legitimately tired of being talked to and asked to pose for pictures. One because it was just too much, but I was also starting to not be able to even enjoy the music. Looking back it really makes me empathize with celebrities in how they have to deal with that every day. I couldn't imagine that. Like I said before, pretty much literally every second crowd had something to say to us about what we were wearing. I must have posed for photos with more than 200 people and by the time the sun was setting, I was exhausted. This is coming from a person who was always voted class clown in high school and has always enjoyed a decent amount of attention.
We were also interviewed far more than just these two stories but we just never found the articles.
Above is the way that I posted that interview on Facebook. I did it as well on instagram but I have far more friends on Facebook than followers on Instagram. Getting 60 likes at this time was really quite a lot for me and definitely added to the whirlwind of attention we got at this music festival. I feel like the post itself did a lot to help boost my online persona of a funny guy/goofball in the answers I gave to the reporter as underlined in the article above. Funny definitely sells on social media, as well as everywhere
This was an interesting post from my high school friend, Kylie Parker. The fact that I hadn't even spoken to her in like 3-4 years before she posted this on my wall and the fact that she knew it was us, definitely speaks to the reach we had on social media and at the festival in general. I took this as very high praise because I can't recall ever going to an event where I after said event talked to my friends and others about the role someone at a participants level at the event. The idea that we were to be spoken about in the same length as performers at Squamish like Eminem and Arcade Fire is really saying something.
I would definitely consider this my main fame spike on social media as we got such notoriety outside our own posts and pictures on Facebook and Instagram. I started to notice more likes on my posts in general since then.
As it says in the article above done by Yolanda Cole, Arcade Fire (one of the bands that were playing at Squamish Valley Music Festival) had asked for their fans to dress up formally. The funny thing was, that we had no idea that Arcade Fire had asked their fans to do so. It was just kind of a lucky coincidence. We have continually done this at music festivals and especially now that we have garnered such success at this one. Definitely save it for far rainier days because we were very much "Hot in our suits."
For my second reflection, I'll be talking about a commercial that I did for Galaxy Motors in collaboration with CTV Victoria.
This post and situation made me feel like a celebrity for a couple reasons. Definitely never felt as much as how I felt in the moment at Squamish, but having a commercial written with me in mind, the entire shooting process which took a couple weeks, going into CTV Vancouver Island to narrate the video and then having it air on both CTV Vancouver Island and CHEK was indeed in the same boat as at Squamish. The commercial is still airing today and has been seen by people in my hometown of Mackenzie, BC. I haven't been back home since the commercial aired, but knowing the town as I do, I would definitely have people talk to me about it on the street. I'm judging this from private messages and what my parents have told me about what they've heard around town. That people back home call me Raz these days, too funny really.
Having grown up in a small town, being on TV was definitely a surreal feeling. A good portion of my friends on Facebook still live in the same sort of areas and to them when considering the feedback in private messages and the comments on my post, thought this was going to be the first of many. It may yet happen again as Raz may make another appearance having aged a bit.
Talking about the post in general. I was surprised when it was posted and only got 54 likes. My analysis as to why this is the case is because I feel that people are more likely to *like a video if the video is embedded on Facebook directly. As in that they don't have to go to a separate website to watch it. I also have evidence in that a video I posted the summer before this commercial aired far outstripped the commercial in attention.
As you can see, this video received nearly double the other videos *likes and had far more comments. In my Facebook Post It is my opinion that the Raz commercial was far funnier and had undoubtedly better production value, but wasn't as popular because people would have to leave Facebook to watch it. This point especially makes sense because many people are perusing Facebook on their mobile and it is a bigger pain in the ass to switch over to another app to watch something. There's no doubt in my mind that if the video was embedded into Facebook that it would have gotten more attention. However, the Raz video was given more shares (a total of 5 if you count reposts) where it was given 10-20 likes on average and some comments. This video did not receive any shares so I think that the two videos resonated with people in different ways. The beard video being one that they simply liked but didn't want their friend base to see, but the Raz video was something that some people were willing to subject their owns friends to.
I also underlined a comment done by Lauren Billey on my Raz video Facebook post that actually put into words about the amount of underwhelming *likes the video had received when she said, "How does this not have more likes?"
Looking back at both of these videos today and especially the Raz one, I find that they both did much to add to my online personae of being a goofball/funny guy. But that my goofballness had finally come to fruition in that it was once again a post that was external to Facebook. In that it is airing on TV and coming to people in a separate medium
For my final reflection, I will be talking about both of my most liked photos posted to my Facebook. Both of these photos have a common theme and continue to push my identity of my online identity being that of a goofball.
This one actually fell into my lap in that someone at Kwantlen told me that I should grow out my hair and beard to look like Tormund Giantsbane and that's exactly why I have the flow I do today. I feel as if it was David Bauerfiiend but I can't be sure. Anyway, I think this photo got over 107 likes for a couple different reasons. I thought that my caption of "That moment when you're curious if Tormund Giantsbane was your Milkman..." was quite funny, although I did receive a scathing message from my mother. Another reason is that I do indeed look like him, but the main reason is that by posting this photo I am connecting to fans of Game of Thrones on my Facebook. This to me is similar to what was spoken of in the documentary we watched where youtubers would have guests on their channels to connect with their followers and merge the two. Although I definitely didn't merge fans with the actor that plays Tormund Giantsbane, I definitely got more likes because I have no doubt that if I would have used more hashtags on both Facebook and Instagram that it would have gotten more attention.
Also, I have underlined the comment made by Breydon Sharp on the photo showing that the love for the Raz video still lives on.
This photo of me being dressed up as Annie for Halloween, is once again taking advantage of the amount of Annie fans that were on my Facebook. As well as that, I suppose anytime a full grown man puts on a dress that it may get a decent amount of attention from a comedic standpoint. For this post, I actually counted up how many girls liked this photo as compared to guys and only 6 of my guy friends on Facebook liked this and the other 104 were solely women. This may of course mean that more girls like Annie than guys but in my experience of being a red head, I have gotten more feedback in laughs to jokes or posts that are of the red head genre from women in general. So it may be a little from column A and a little from column B.
In conclusion, I find that sticking to my online persona of a goofball/funny guy has worked in the sense of receiving a decent amount of likes and comments. I have in total roughly plus or minus 600 friends on Facebook on any given day and the number is always growing. The point I am trying to make with this number is that for the posts that have received upwards of 100 likes, that is basically 1/6th of my Facebook friends going out of their way to *like one of my posts. This is not to mention, how many people saw these posts and chose not to *like or comment, not to mention how many of my friends may be inactive. It would be cool to see some day if social media will put beside the amount of likes, what the percent of *likes to followers is to emphasize better how effective the post was. It would definitely help show how successful a post for me. My cousin, who is 14 years old can post a selfie on Facebook or Instagram and get close to 350 likes each time. However, she has more than 2.5k followers on both. This is simply the nature of growing up in a high school where everyone has social media and follows/friends everyone they have. So when I look at my posts from her perspective, my *likes and comments are incredibly low.
