Me, me, ME!
That’s the mantra of the musician.
I’m a nobody on the way to somewhere. I’m big but not big enough. I’m a superstar and I’ve got a new release and you’ve got to HELP ME!
Like me, share my post, listen on Spotify, subjugate your own interests on behalf of mine.
But that’s not how John Oliver does it.
Oliver has created a club, a tribe, a group of believers who will follow him anywhere and do anything for him. But he doesn’t ask for anything for himself. Instead, he motivates his people in a cause! And if you know anything about millennials, you know they’re cause-driven. Every business has a charity component. Assets are secondary, otherwise they’d all be in pursuit of hot iron instead of living in L.A. without cars and taking Uber, unthinkable to their parents. It’s all about meaning and belonging.
And Oliver has tapped into that.
So during the show he’s a ringleader. Pointing out the inanities of society. Going into depth on abuses you might be unaware of. Actually, it’s not that different from the Howard Stern paradigm, but Howard keeps himself separate, he keeps wanting to take himself out of the equation, pointing out problems that piss him off but not imploring his audience to take action. But when he does…
Stern moves mountains. His fans buy products, he helped Christie Todd Whitman get elected. Stern has a better bond with his audience than any rock star.
And John Oliver’s got that same essence. But his game is to use his power for the common good.
Net neutrality. No one cares anymore. Kind of like privacy. We can’t fight the same war over and over and over again. Hell, Oliver himself has already done a long segment on net neutrality.
Only this time, after pointing out how the government makes it so hard to express your displeasure, he reveals a shortcut, wherein you can go directly to the site he created, click once and be brought to the page where you can tell the FCC where to go.
It’s ingenious. It’s like hanging with your high school buddies and hearing someone reveal a great prank and saying I’M DOWN WITH THAT, LET’S DO IT!
Yes, there is a sense of humor, which none of those in Washington have whatsoever. We can run rings around them if we just unite and use our brains.
This is the future of entertainment. It’s not about top-down worship.
Hell, look at music festivals. The lineup is announced AFTER tickets go on sale! Proving that the festival itself is a greater attraction than the talent.
Think about this. You’re nothing without your audience, but your audience no longer wants to be passive, and it’s only tweens who pay mindless fealty to entertainers. Whereas modern masters can move mountains and burnish their own image by focusing on the EXTERNAL!
It’s not as simple as donating a dollar a ticket to charity.
It’s got to be active. On both sides, both the performer and the audience member.
You’re a team, of disrupters. Unite us and we have untold power.
Furthermore, the first time Oliver attacked net neutrality his acolytes crashed the government servers. Which had them doing dances in their brains, they stuck it to the man, the somnambulant press covered the story. That’s right, the media just reports, WE MAKE THE NEWS!
And you too can make it. If like John Oliver you harness the power of your audience not for yourself, but for good.
Think about it…
“Net Neutrality II: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”:
You can watch the whole thing, or forward to fifteen minutes in, where he says “So sadly, it seems once more, we the people must take this matter into our own hands”
P.S. Google News shows over 100,000 links on the search “john oliver net neutrality.” Want to reach people? Don’t make it about you, make it about EVERYBODY!
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