Remember that obnoxious kid in grade school who was always the attention hog? Always needed to have the most attention at show and tell. Whined if they weren’t chosen first at kickball. Interrupted your story at lunch time. But what did mom always tell you? “Don’t give them any attention…that’s just what they want.”
Well apparently the moms of the world need to give all us Americans a little reminder lecture, because that obnoxious kid is back and he brought the big guns; Charlie Sheen is the king of the social media and pop culture playground right now. Complain about his attention antics all you want, but I think we are all to blame. We have practically rolled out the red carpet, welcoming him will all the necessary pop culture rights of passage.
A successful 24 hour quest to make an explosive entrance onto Twitter by gaining a million fans? Check. Multiple interviews with high profile news anchors where you voice your ultimate confusion as to why people aren’t worshiping the ground you walk on? Check. We even gave him the highest status symbol of ultimate pop culture takeover- a ridiculously catchy autotune YouTube video, mashing up the most hilarious statements from his multiple interviews. It racked up almost 6 million views in five days.
We’re all criticizing his poor decisions and inability to represent himself in a respectful manner. But do we really have room to criticize? As we all sit around and sing his winning song over and over, we are just feeding the PR monster machine Charlie and his extremely smart publicists have created. The man is at the top of the list on desired interviewees on newstations across the country, is a web viral star, and had the whole country is waiting with baited breath for his next move. Not bad for someone who just got fired.
Charlie Sheen’s life might not be right on track. But some of his publicity moves are right on. If Charlie can manage to ride his way of newfound pop culture popularity and turn the attention into some PR tactics (maybe figuring out his life along the way), he might really be the winner after all.
