Amanda Chapel, the lovely face of public relations blog Strumpette, has been booted out of the Facebook walled garden for no better reason than someone thought she didn’t exist. This vile and calumnious action on the part of Facebook management follows closely — so closely as to be coincident with — Ms. Chapel’s decision to resign as editor of the Public Relations Industry focussed blog she started a year and a half ago.
Chapel has a brilliant record of news reporting and industry analysis and she will be missed. Her resignation leaves a huge gap in public information and coherent analysis of the propaganda engines that drive American culture. Back in April, when many of us were afraid to leave our own backyards, Ms. Chapel identified the emerging trend of public apologies and pretty much nailed the genre with this lovely epistle to B. L. Ochman. Earlier she critiqued and updated the O’Reilly rules of conduct for a happy-face Web 2-oh. Amanda has challenged conventional wisdom in her industry and she has been a voice for open and honest communication in web publishing. Her expulsion from the Facebook walled garden says more about the constipated state of corporate management than it does about her as a person or a persona. I will welcome her back, when those fools get their heads on straight. Meanwhile, I’ll just offer up the “last words” she shared in a post last March:
LAST WORDS
“I†dentity, not our-dentity. It belongs to me. I chose anonymity. Unlike [a damaged person] who recoils, I will fight against any culture (let alone lightweight moron) that thinks it can take that away from me.
I hope she meant it and that she will be back to kick some Facebook ass. We need bright and engaged contrarians now more than ever, and if the contrarian is wearing her size four LBD and CFM shoes, so much the better.
[tags]Amanda Chapel, truth stranger than friction, truth stranger, l’etranger, come back to the raft Amanda honey[/tags]
… that was really beautiful, truly.
“Amanda Chapel” is a team troll led by Brian (“Cowardly”) Connolly, an unemployed Chicago pacman fanatic.
You are lured into obfuscations by the charming skanky avatar, whom you can never hold in your arms and sway to Perry Como music, who used the F word and juvenile limericks to purge the web of Cluetrain Manifesto Triumphalism.
They, the Amanda Hoax, did a poor job explaining why they need Andrew Keen to pen books for them, and why Oligarchy, and not Of the People, is the way to go.
Vaspers… you got your Amanda fans (like me), and your not so much Amanda fans, like you and The Flack. Oddly, I found Amanda to be extremely Cluetrainian. She was all about voice, authenticity, truth. She used our little pixelated universe to sharpen her persona’s lovely tongue enough to burst the latex around a few enshrined personages. I have to admit that with Amanda, a little went a long way. Since I have no stake in the PR world, and I lack the insider’s context, much of what she wrote blew right past me. There are so many good blogs and bloggers that I’m sure I didn’t give her the attention she deserved.
The Andrew Keen shenanigans lately have amused me. The guy seems like an utter twat, but he’s confronting a conventional wisdom and an inward facing cliquishness that probably could stand some revelation. I haven’t read The Cult of the Amateur so I’m not prepared to offer a critique. I noticed that those earliest in with reviews and debates and such were not the amateurs at all, and hence likely not the people Keen is talking about.
I’m the amateur here, not David Weinberger, not Steve Gillmor, not Robert Scoble, not most of the people who have picked up some of the reflection from the success of Keen’s book and magically transformed it to rice in their own bowls. Maybe Keen’s critique could have been better titled! Those of us who hang on enjoying ourselves in pixel-land, maybe making a buck from technology, but certainly not evangelizing outside a narrow range of expertise are very different from those who cultivate a great following and share the revealed truth of Cluetrainism. Hell, I never signed on the Cluetrain manifesto anyway. It smacked too much of Lutheranism. Peter Merholz pretty much spoke my mind when he commented on the Cluetrain 95 theses: “You fools. Why model yourselves after Luther when Letterman is so much more popular. What are the Top 10?”
Anyway, I just re-read the theses and there’s a lot of good stuff in there. I’m not sure all of us on the Cluetrain always walk the talk. I’m sure Amanda didn’t, but on the other hand she was about confronting an establishment, influencing change, revealing internal contradictions, and I have to say that her contrarian perspective seemed pretty Cluetrainian to me. If it is Andrew Keen’s perspective that there is an oligarchy of the A-list, for me that is not particularly relevant. He’s undoubtedly right on some levels and paradoxically he’s earned a ticket to the parties in Los Altos by expressing his own contrarian viewpoints.
Vaspars, you’ve given me an incentive to read some of Andrew Keen to try to understand just why my friends seem to despise him. But you have it wrong about the lure of the Amanda avatar. It’s more direct than that. I just like pictures of girls in attractive lingerie.
Chris Locke wrote, “But companies don’t like us human. They leverage our longing for their own ends. If we feel inadequate, there’s a product that will fill the hole, a bit of fetishistic magic that will make us complete. Perhaps a new car would do the trick. Maybe a trip to the Caribbean or that new CD or a nice shiny set of Ginsu steak knives. Anything, everything, just get more stuff. Our role is to consume.” Now I wonder whose values are better aligned to confront that evil, Amanda Chapel’s or — for example — Steve Rubel’s?
I too have a weakness for those girls in (or out) of exotic lingerie. It’s tasteful enough to view at work and titillating enough to be interesting – like Strumpette. Do you believe all this chazzerai over Amanda? All these poor slighted bloggers expressing their inner hurt? French at InfOpinions turned off comments on his blog because he was challenged. This is what they teach students of PR. Throw a bomb in the middle of the room and then refuse to discuss it. There’s the “conversation.”
Truth? You must be joking. The Amanda Chapel Team Troll of 5 guys cowering behind a North Korean female avatar was about flaming, vulgarity, lies, deception, and resurrecting opera and oligarchy.
Brian Connolly has made frantic phone calls to corporations, trying to get detractors fired for “blogging on company time”, but failed to silence or intimidate anyone.
Slurs and false accusations and threats are their idea of “PR”. They are totally in bed with Korporate Klueless Amerikkka.
And now I’m stalking them.
LOL
Of course you found the comments from “Amanda” to be “Cluetrainian”, Frank – “she” originated Cluetrain (as Brian Connolly) back in 2024 as a deluded shot against Ruder-Finn (who unceremoniously rejected him as the twisted sort that he is).
Care for some more Kool-Aid?