I dole out advice on how not to be annoying on the Internet pretty regularly, but the same couple of issues seem to keep coming up for my fellow singers. So I thought it would be fun to tackle some of these questions Emily Post-style. Of course, this isn’t an advice column, so I don’t really have any letters to answer. But with a little poetic license, we can always pretend.
Dear Tech-Savvy Singer,
I am horrified! I just found out a colleague I did an opera with posted a video of our performance on YouTube. Not only was it a pretty shabby production that I’m embarrassed to have been in, but it was not a good performance for me. It was several years ago, and I’ve improved a lot since then. I don’t want people searching for me to come across this. Is it OK to ask my colleague to take it down? Should I report the video to YouTube? How can I get this off the air?
Sincerely,
Embarrassed Elvira
Dear EE,
This is a pretty common conundrum for up-and-coming singers. We have to perform to get experience before we are at a professional level. We have to work our way up through shoestring budget companies that might not put on the most polished performances. And we all have bad voice days.
Yet here we are in the YouTube age, where anything we do in public can end up published. Meanwhile, advice comes at us left and right to have a full portfolio online, including audio and video clips. That means that young singers looking to build a name for themselves might be in a hurry to build up their Web presence with videos of live performances.
If your colleague really did a good job and needs the video for his portfolio, asking him to take it down might be asking a lot. What if you just asked him to remove your name? That way he could leave it up, but no one would find it by searching for you. Someone you know might stumble across it, but it wouldn’t be a “Let’s Google this singer to see if I should hire her” situation. And that’s a very reasonable request that your fellow singer should have no reason to deny.
If you do feel that the video is so damaging that it needs to come down altogether, try sending your friend a really nice e-mail. Let him know that he did such a great job that you can see why he would want to share it with the world, but you weren’t up to his level and it shows, and could he possibly remove the clips that you are in?
Hopefully he will agree. But he’s within his rights not to. In this era, no matter how far out in the sticks your gig is, no matter how few people in the audience, you have to perform it as if it’s going to end up on YouTube. Because there is a good chance it will.
Consider politicians (kind of hard not to right about now). If they let one poorly worded phrase slip out in rural Pennsyltucky, it’s all over network news. One mistake at any time of day, in any location, could ruin their careers. Fortunately the stakes are lower with us, but we have to be on our toes just like they do.
You do have a few more options. If the performance was with a bigger company, they might have some sort of paperwork in place to make sure they retain broadcast rights. Try alerting them and see if they’ll contact the singer. If he wants to keep working, he’ll be quick to comply. Or, if the video was professionally recorded, even by somebody’s uncle who is a wedding photographer, the professional probably has their work copyrighted. So you could try contacting them to see if they can do anything about it.
But no, don’t be the jerk who goes reporting a video to YouTube just because you find it unflattering. No reason to risk shutting down your colleague’s account because you had a bad performance.
One last thing to consider: take control of your own Web presence. If you have your own website, videos, and social media accounts, with your name all over them, that’s usually what people are going to find when they search for you. So get the videos that you do want out there and plaster them with your name and website.
Dear Tech-Savvy Singer,
Help! I run an opera company/recording studio/agency, and someone is badmouthing it in an online community. What do I do for damage control? Do I go in there and stand up for myself? Do I get my friends to sign in and take my side? A lot of people could end up reading this, so I have to do something.
Sincerely,
Misunderstood Maestro
Dear MM,
Technically, jumping into the conversation and giving a polite version of your side of the story should be the right thing to do. A professional, well thought-out response seems like a good idea. After all, freedom of speech is the backbone of the Internet, and if someone feels free to talk smack about you, you should feel free to defend yourself.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually work this way. Online communities, even though they are often public and read by many times as many people as they are written by, are usually tight-knit groups. You’re not walking into a town hall meeting with your suit and briefcase and PowerPoint presentation. You’re walking into the front-stoop card game outside the corner store with your suit and briefcase and PowerPoint presentation. And if that analogy already makes you feel eyebrow-raisingly out of place and awkwardly unwelcome, you’re also going into this neighborhood hangout for a confrontation with one of its regulars, who you might not even know.
Whether it’s a forum, a Facebook group, or a corner of the blogosphere, an online community has its own currency of trust. The people who are there day in and day out have reputations. Some are great, some are not; some get along, some don’t. But there’s comfort in that familiarity, and suspicion of outsiders. You can walk in there if you want, but make sure you know what you’re getting into.
The ideal situation would be if you were already there. If you were proactive enough to get involved in the online discourse before you were implicated, then you would already have that trust capital. Even if you were involved in a different community than the one that was badmouthing you, there is enough cross-pollination that people there would know your persona, and you would avoid the “who the heck is this schmuck” backlash.
Too late for that now, though. So what can you do?
Well, if you have a halfway decent reputation in the classical community, someone who’s already there should come to your defense. Opinions might be divided enough not to shut the original dissenter up completely, but that’s just how free speech works. (Of course, if they are spreading serious factual lies about you that are hurting your business, that is slander and that’s something you need to talk to your lawyer about.)
If you do decide to go in yourself, do your homework. Read as much backlog of previous conversations as you have time for—especially look for situations similar to yours, how the outsider chose to handle them, and how that all went down. Learn from the mistakes of others. Figure out who is who—not who they are in real life, but who has what kind of reputation. If the town guru is badmouthing you, that’s going to be harder to tackle than if it’s someone who’s always negative and complaining.
If you prepare a response to post, find out if you know anyone who is a member of the community and ask them to read it for you first and give some feedback.
Meanwhile, here are some don’ts . . .
Don’t get all your friends to go down and stand up for you if they are not already members of the community. This makes you look desperate.
Don’t try any sock-puppetry tricks. That means making multiple fake accounts, like inventing a bunch of new people who are standing up for you. This is very easy to see through and it makes you a liar.
Don’t expect professionalism, fairness, or civility. This is the Internet, not a church bake sale committee. It’s a jungle, especially when people post anonymously. If you don’t fully comprehend this, set up a YouTube account and post a video of . . . anything. And see what kind of anonymous comments you get. I have there learned that I suck, my band sucks, and I am fat.
Lastly, forgive me for saying what you might not want to hear, but if people are posting bad things about you in this tiny industry where we all know each other, and no one is coming back with anything positive, why is that? There are sometimes legitimate reasons (maybe you are in Japan, and there is only one singer in the community who has worked in Japan, so no one else has any experience with you), but there is always the chance that more people than you realized are feeling that they have had bad experiences with you. Not many will have the guts to say so, either to your face or online (especially if they are using their real names), so this could actually be invaluable feedback. Take the details with a grain of salt, but take the message to heart. Maybe there is something about your business that you can change to serve the classical vocal community better.
I have a lot more “letters” but am out of room for this month. Let’s do this again sometime!
