Spiked: Between like and performance

The sad comedian Robin Williams is dead. That's enough to make you cry. And clears the way for other media stars - those with no training and no brains, but with an almost unnatural tendency to overestimate themselves and stage themselves. Those who don't make us laugh, but who make themselves look ridiculous, so ridiculous that they're almost cool again; where you can't figure out whether they don't realize how stupid and embarrassing they are, or whether they deliberately act stupid and embarrassing in order to market themselves better. Selling yourself well is everything. But to what end? And to whom?

We people of today, overloaded with important news, like nothing better than to be amused by the unimportant. We can't run away from all the hard information we are bombarded with from every side. That's why we consciously look elsewhere. Where it's colorful, flashy and funny instead of dusty, bloody and bombed. "Bauer ledig sucht" instead of "Tagesthemen".

Bubbling par excellence

Three stars of these days are therefore - hello again - our very own Vujo Gavric, ex-bachelor, sunset poet and lover of women, who, because things have inexplicably gone a bit quiet around him, rips off all his clothes and posts a nude photo of himself, a lady and his best (?) piece. And suddenly he's back in the media, even in Advertising Week. As the stupidest and best self-promoter in the world. Congratulations! The second media star is a federal parliament secretary, who I won't mention in detail because everyone already knows her anyway. The third star is short, fat, red-haired and already a great talker at the age of five. Pumuckl? No, his name is Noah Ritter and since last Monday he has been a sensation for American TV audiences. And soon probably for us too. The little fellow grabbed the microphone and spontaneously took over the direction when a news reporter from WNEP-TV, a TV station from Pennsylvania, wanted to interview him at a fair (http://bit.ly/1qQIOIH). He blathers on about something even less interesting than the weather, delighting the audience. As of Wednesday, the YouTube video has already been viewed over 12.5 million times. That's two and a half times the Swiss population! Which says less about the babbling brat than about the miserable adults who find it entertaining. To top it all off: Noah's favorite word is "apparently." He uses it in every sentence - and thus "apparently" hits the nerve of the times. Because today everything is "apparently", nothing is certain. Except blah blah blah.

To become famous today, you no longer need talent, ideas, a sharp mind or a good sense of humor. All you need is a cell phone, snap a selfie and you're already filling the summer slump. The only danger is if you step too far backwards while taking a selfie on the cliff, run in front of a streetcar or fall down a manhole. But the main thing is that friends and followers have seen it. Friends? Robin Williams would have needed some, people who look at him, talk about him and with him. But we zapped past the real news in favor of skin and silly talk. It's much more fun. But whether I think that's a good thing, I'm not sure.