Sigh.
Oh, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. And it’s not like I didn’t expect it to happen again. Actors are … actorish, and this is what they do. They’re like cats on the doorstep…I want in…I want out…I want in…but unlike cats, you can’t exactly stick your foot under their butts and decide it for them. For one thing, most of them are bigger than you, if you happen to be me. For another, the whole virtual butt-kicking thing works much better in fetish DVDs than in motivational emails.
So I’ve heard.
But fame or no fame, actor or no actor, I’ve been down this pixel trail a time or two (dozen) before, and frankly, you can’t push people. They come or they go, and it can mean a great deal to the “audience” or it can mean nothing at all, but that makes no difference whatsoever to whether or not the person returns for the long term. I’ve seen people come back for twelve hours. I’ve seen people come back for just long enough to register a digital avatar trail and say “see, I went.” I’ve seen Brian Atene come and go and come back and go again over the course of a couple of years. But it’s the same process and we are just exactly as impotent.
I could email. I have his email. But I don’t for a second believe he’s playing coy: I think the man is honestly backing off, and that nothing is creepier than opening your email to see a mass of zombie grab-hands springing out from it, trying to draw you back. I’ll leave him be. If he returns, he returns; if he doesn’t, I hope he’s making shitloads of money and eventually sends me that autograph he owes me, which, no, I don’t think I’ll ever see. I’m like that myself, you see, and the list of things I owe to people I’ve never seen in the flesh is longer than I am tall. Even if I were, like, tall.
And if you think this is just about Brian Atene, you haven’t been paying attention at all.
raincoaster 
The urge to totally dominate the Global Media is having a waning moment?
The raincoaster may soon dry up?
The fairies at the bottom of the garden may disappear into some form of limbo?
If this comes to pass, I will be emailing you. Supporting your choice whatever it is.
No, no. In fact, I’m really annoyed I haven’t been able to be blogging more here lately. I’m just working three jobs, doing taxes, and successfully fighting off eviction. Been a busy couple of weeks.
It’s just that this phenomenon is so widespread, and every time someone of prominence goes offline the world seems as if it will end. And it seems that, if you could just write the perfect email, they’d come back. And sometimes you do and they do and then you know what? They go away again because they are just not that into it. And it’s okay.
It appears to be a tragedy to those left behind, but it’s not. It’s just a change of direction. And yes, it’s a snub too, so it hurts, but it’s about as impersonal as a snub can be, really.
Raincoaster, have you found the new secret account?
No. If there is one he doesn’t seem to want me to know about it. All I’ve gotten in my inbox lately is screechy emails from some fear-ridden bourgeois about the Downtown Eastside. Atene knows how to get ahold of me. If he doesn’t, I’ll assume he doesn’t want me to know.
Its deleted now! It was just there for one day or so.
Ah, typical. Well wait it out. An actor without an audience is a performance art piece waiting to happen. My guess is it’ll be back online by mid-October, but we shall see.
thanks for the kind words. i’m entitled to my opinion just like you are with your little blog. true artists withstand the slings and arrows to persevere.
Huh? Who the hell are you? Oh yeah, you’re the one Atene told to fuck off. He tells many people to fuck off. Sweetie, if you can’t handle the internet, stay offline.
The fact that people are telling you to fuck off doesn’t mean you’re a true artist. I’ve read your YouTube comments; they’re not going to be collected and issued in hardcover, my sweet.
Ugh. I’m not an actor. I’m a regular, analog guy who was thrust onto the digital, internet stage. I just made that comment in the feedback section of the “Loss of Atene” video you’ve embeded here. (Read my other remarks about actors there.) This is all rather a storm in a tea cup, really, and I’ll quote Susan to Orson Welles in Citizen Kane: “You’re not the one gettin’ the raspberries.” The whole thing was a hobby. It was like model plane building. Most people liked my model planes. There was always that one cocksucker though, like frosh30, who would have to say: “This is Dogshit.” I can’t take that stuff. Especially, since I didn’t ask to be called onto the internet, anyway. I never wanted it. If I had wanted it the internet would’ve been filled with Atene videos at the onset of the “Kubrick” video posting. I couldn’t bring myself to record anything substantial for a year, or more. Now, that I’ve overcome enough of myself to perform again I get Frosh30 and the entire uneducated internet generation puffing foulness in my face and smoke up my ass. Fuck it. I never needed it. I never wanted it. Calling me an actor is the highest insult you could possably give me, too. (Oh, yeah, you might call my stuff dogshit.) Everyone calls George Lucas films dogshit but everyone goes to see them. He made the new Indiana Jones film while saying he knew people would through the occasional tomato, or two, or three, at it. He wanted to make it, though. That’s the difference. He wanted to make it and he needed to make it. I don’t need to make anything. I have no ambitions. They were pulverized long ago. I’ll become forgotten again, shortly, and that would make me very happy. (Here’s an aside: Its creepy you should demand my personal email just so I can call my voice into a teacup storm.)
My last posting has a typo in it. It should read: “He made the new Indiana Jones film while saying he knew people would THROW the occasional tomato, or two, or three, at it.”
Huh? Dude, I didn’t demand your email; you filled it in when you left comments. My whole point was I was NOT going to do that.
No. I don’t take offense to it. I’ve commented here previously. I mention it because the internet (and its depersonalization of humans) is one of those Ray Bradbury predictions come true; and I dislike it. In this way I’m much like the boy in “Something Wicked This Way Comes”. I should never have stopped to look at the Lightning Rod. The damn thing’s evil. And Christ. I’ve attatched it to my fucking house.
This is true. At least you always used a splashy backdrop so we don’t know what it looks like. That voice teacher shrunken head, though; if a burglar spots it, that’s a total giveaway.
Actually, I don’t think the internet DOES depersonalize humans. It just allows them to see how other people react to them. Before the internet we had gossip and talking behind people’s backs and so on, but there were no transcripts. It’s the recording of formerly ephemeral conversations that’s what’s so freaky about it, but it’s not that there’s anything inhuman about it; it’s just that it’s showing us a side of humanity we prefer to forget about.
wasnt claiming myself to be an artist, was referring to BA. obviously that was lost on you raincoaster.
hardly ‘stalked’ you…link to this page right from the youtube site.
brian, had i known leaving a comment would result in all this i wouldn’t have bothered. nevertheless, do your thing man. who cares what i think or what anyone else thinks? obviously you enjoy this little charade because you’ve left huge responses and are obviously following this daily. at first, i’ll admit, all this amused me greatly. now i realize i’m leaving posts on some random blog to a person i have no interest in whatsoever. came across the kubrick vid on fark.com, watched a few of your other vids and felt compelled to comment cause i wasn’t a huge fan of what i saw. vile? perhaps. worth all of this? hardly.
you’ll never hear from me again as i have no intentions of watching or reading anything by any of the people involved in all of this cause i realized i got sucked into some dark vortex of crap.
won’t even read any response to THIS comment as i am honestly a bit weirded out by all of this and have realized that i have no intention of losing any more of my precious time to any of you schmucks. learn to take things with a grain of salt.
peace and love…and oh, stay gold.
You are a relentless little troll, aren’t you? And yes, you’ll be back; people like you are always dying to hear what other people are saying about them.
Who cares what you think? Nobody, they just find it creepy that you follow Brian Atene only to insult him, follow it through the search to videos ABOUT Brian Atene, click on the More button to find LINKS to videos ABOUT Brian Atene, then return to each of them to make repeated comments about how you don’t really care.
It must be awful dull in your mom’s basement.
I miss Brians videos!
i thought you might like to know that someone has stolen your blog post:
http://travelfaironline.com/9179
Thanks. What a loser that thief is.
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