I kind of dig Bette Davis. When you look at her body of work, you notice that she rarely took the safe roles. Her performances were more nuanced than other actresses or her time. Grittier. She went out on a limb every time she stepped in front of the camera, and I dig that about her. But what I dig most about her is that she knew enough about the reality of the world she lived in to do away with the usual sugar-coating many of us sometimes feel pressured to use as a courtesy filter. Like it or not, there’s something refreshing about being around someone who has the huevos to tell it to you like it is, and not feel that they have apologize for… basically just being honest with you.
And though yeah, it would have been a lot more glamorous to be seen having drinks with Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth, an evening of drinking martinis with Bette would have probably been a lot more fun.
Originally, I was going to quote Bette Davis in regards to something she said about choosing your enemies wisely and their importance to your career (something we don’t talk about enough in these so-called “transparent” conversations, we’re having) but in looking at the rest of the brilliant stuff she was quoted saying, I couldn’t resist taking this post in a completely different direction. So without further ado, here are 11 things Bette Davis had to say about the Social Media world, way back in the day… kinduv:
1. “Today everyone is a star. In my day, we earned that recognition.”
2. “In this business, until you’re known as a monster you’re not a star.”
3. “The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone’s concern and like vampires they suck our life’s blood.”
4. “Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times – almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about me was probably what made me successful.”
5. “There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.”
6. “To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.”
7. “I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.”
8. “I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.”
9. “The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.”
10. “My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.”
11. “In this rat-race everybody’s guilty till proved innocent!”
Let those sink in a bit. That whole enemy thing, we’ll get to it some other time. 😉
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
Timeless! And, yes, applicable to today’s social media environment. What I would add, is that Bette Davis’ very best performances were achieved when *she* had a very strong director to stand up to her. On those occasions when she had one without-the-backbone (more frequent in her later performances) she could crossover into caricature. So there’s some irony, here. One must have huevos… but being bombastic has its pricetags, too.
Excellent observation. Right on too.
From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it..Bette Davis
#3 is significant, especially in light of the requests and accessibility most feel toward The Gurus. @cspenn’s infamous fee-based response form immediately comes to mind. @AmberCadabra’s recent blogpost of when enough is enough; @chrisbrogan’s post about @anywhere and the redrawing of his boundaries (boy do I sound like a creeper!). ;o)
That being said, I think that with the power of social media, it can seem dangerously easy to assume that access = information = success for self.
The missing link still is, and always will be, personal accountability and effort.
I can DM or email any of the thought leaders who have the grace/time/schedule to answer me until the cows come home. There are probably those out there who will do so, looking for the elusive moment when, magically, the knowledge/power/influence of the “star” will transfer to the seeker.
Won’t happen. At some point, each of us has to (wo)man up and take responsibility for developing our own skills. Our own voice.
Fasten your seatbelts, indeed.
Well put. There is a huge difference between would-be Social Media “gurus” who spend more time on the conference circuit, regurgitating the work of others and passing their collective (or should i say “collected”) wisdom as their own, and those in the business who come from business backgrounds – with actual experience in the matters we discuss and put forward.
Where the rubber meets the road: Making the theories shared in presentations, blog posts and e-books actually work in the real world. THAT is what the press of “followers” rarely gets to see. (Except perhaps in rare cases like the Ford/Scott Monty relationship.)
And you’re right, we all have our own voice, our own skill set, our own contributions to make. Chris Brogan and I complement each other very well, but he and I do completely different things. What he brings to the table is completely different from what I bring to the table. Same with Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim, Amber Naslund, Scott Monty, Keith Burtis and Coca Cola’s Adam Brown.
This whole “star” thing is complete bullshit. We aren’t stars. Ask someone on the street if they’ve ever heard of Chris, Jeremiah or me. The answer will be a resounding “no.” 😀 We may know our stuff, but this whole concept of the “superstar consultant” isn’t really doing anyone any good. It’s a distraction. An ego trip. Worse yet, it’s a golden carrot for scores of impressionable underemployed marketing hopefuls who believe with all their hearts that if they get enough Twitter followers, they’ll soon be making $20K per day on the conference circuit and getting book deals to turn their tweets into cash.
Enter “social media expert certification” schemes, to take advantage of all of those people’s hopes and aspirations: Convince them that parting with $3K in exchange for a series of webinars and a piece of paper will suddenly open up the golden gates of Social Media consulting. And that having chatted once or twice with an established “guru” will somehow earn them a seat at one of the many tables still left open at the guru country club. It’s crap. Complete bunk.
The truth: Success is hard. Success takes 150+ hour work weeks, a lot of trial and error, a lot of frustration and disappointment, a lot of false starts, people taking advantage of you, and it especially takes a few subtle but important lucky breaks. For some of us, success takes longer because we practice what we preach in terms of ethical behavior and integrity.
Tip: MANY so-called gurus are as mercenary as a used car salesman. The transparency they preach, the grandiose posts about personal responsibility and ethical behavior, it all goes right out the window as soon as someone waves a paycheck in their face. Nobody talks about it in the open, and the small cadres of sell-outs in the industry protect each other as you would expect, but be aware that while incredible work is being done in social media today, a rather sizable chunk of the people most “vocal” about the space are completely full of poopoo. Pay them a few hundred dollars, and they will sell your conference, your certification program, your webinar or your social media widget all day long without ever giving a thought to whether or not it’s any good (or real, even). Their reasoning: I’m getting paid. Say anything, do anything, sell anything for a paycheck. Then turn around and pretend you aren’t doing it while preaching ethics and transparency. It’s sad. Don’t even get me started on the follower-build schemes many of these “respectable” social media experts put together to inflate their number of followers to appear more legitimate. Smoke and mirrors all the way.
Truth: There are no stars here. If it sometimes seems that I am having a charmed life, it’s because I do make a point to enjoy the charmed moments that come my way. But that’s it. I live in a small house in South Carolina, I drive a 7-year-old car that leaks when it rains, my lawn looks horrible, I haven’t had a real vacation in six or seven years, and I buy store brand cans of beans to save a dollar just like everyone else. We’re all just working stiffs, like the guy at the fast food drive-through and the dude sitting in his cubicle all day. We just happen to work in a more “visible” line of work within a particular industry, and we occasionally get paid pretty well (to compensate for all the hours when we don’t get paid at all). All those cool MacBook pros and frequent flyer miles don’t make us cool. They make us just like everyone else. When you start seeing us on the covers of Wired, Fast Company, Newsweek, Esquire, Cosmo and People, then maybe we’ll be stars. Until then, we’re just like everyone else: people sitting at desks, working long hours behind the scenes to pay our bills and put food on the table.
I’ll give you this though: You won’t find any stars among us, but you will find your share of actors: Not really social media media experts (or experts in anything). They just do a pretty good job of playing one on the internet.
😉
Hey Olivier,
I dig Bettie Davis but I also appreciate Mae West, one of the social quotes I love of Mae’s is;
“Outta site is outta mind and outta mind is outta of money honey!”
That about sums up Social Business and Top of Mind to me.
Cheers,
Jon Ferrara
CEO | Nimble – More Customers, Less Work.
http://www.nimble.com
Ooo. That’s a good one.
this will give a laugh. growin up in the 70s..my grandmother’s advice to me time and time again was (no joke) “A woman needs to be Betty Crocker in the kitchen and Betty Davis in the bedroom”
We disagreed on a lot.
Seems to me if my grandmother woulda pointed out these aspects of Bette’s character I mighta digged her more 🙂
So cool to read this post and the comments. Olivier, esp your response above to @mcKra1g….really hoping you are writing that comment as a book and the whole thinking behind the stream of comments and posts when you addressed the social media expert training huggabaloo you reference here.
What I value most about this ongoing discussion is the underpinning of the import of authenticity, integrity, and principled character. No matter what our focus. I’m a healer. I’m not a social media strategist. I have so much to learn to even get my social communicating practice ebbing and flowing. But no matter what our professions, the demand for principled character will always matter. Always.
Grateful this blog continues to be a home base of defending that. 🙂
(Um, I’ll leave the assessment of my emulation per my grandmother’s insistance of Bette Davis or Crocker for another time. Heh.) 🙂
THANK YOU, Olivier! Priceless. Very relevant and very spot-on post. My all-time favorite is #10 – I have it on my desk.
as always, love and fully appreciate your honesty… even when you say something I don’t agree with, it is still extremely satisfying to see there are people in the world who are not making any excuses or apologize for their opinions!
Thank you, the value you give is great. Giving Value to the World is all we need to do
it’s a good post , I know something about social media, it’s so megicprom dresses uk
Olivier,
Somehow I missed Bette Davis and caught it when I was reading Julius Caesar. I did a research paper on Bette as my favorite powerful woman. My prof thought I was silly, then after she read my paper changed her mind. Bette was a pioneer, one of the first women in Hollywood to demand that she be able to choose her roles, one of the first woman directors, and just an all around interesting person. Her only fault was that she was not good at choosing men. Oh, well, can’t have everything! I’m glad you like her. BTW, Caesar is a pretty good guy, too!!
Renee
The more I learn about her, the more I like her.