Oh Myyy! (There Goes The Internet) Read online

  Oh Myyy!

  there goes the internet

  George Takei

  Oh Myyy! by George Takei

  Copyright © 2012 by Oh Myyy! Limited Liability Company

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Oh Myyy! Limited Liability Company

  1501 Broadway, Suite 2900, New York, NY 10036

  www.theohmybook.com

  Originally published in digital edition by Oh Myyy! Limited Liability Company, November 2012

  Contents

  Oh Myyy!

  Status Symbolism

  Twitter Sniping

  Waka Waka Into Mordor

  The Star Alliance

  Bacon

  That’s Not Funny

  Grammar Nazis

  Chairman Meow

  Don’t You Have A Bridge To Go Live Under?

  But Enough About Me. What Do YOU Think of Me?

  Spider-man, Spider-man, George Takei should be Spider-man

  By the Numbers

  Apocalypse Soon

  Getting My Facefix

  I’m on the Edge

  George Fakei

  It’s on the Net, It Must Be True

  Use The Source

  Epic Fail, Epic Win

  Takei 3.0

  Dedicated to

  my husband Brad Takei,

  who swore I had it in me

  to write another book

  and to

  my trusty interns,

  who demanded

  not to be named.

  Oh Myyy!

  How in the world did a common, everyday exclamation come to be so associated with me? “Oh My!” truly has become my signature. Many people ask me about when I started saying it, but it’s actually something I’d been using all my life. “Oh my!” Doesn’t everybody say it? “Oh my!” Now, somehow, it’s become my brand. For this, I put the blame squarely on one world-renowned rascal named Howard Stern.

  I had been on Howard Stern’s radio show many times since the early 90s — a few times intentionally, but more often not. The times I purposefully appeared were to promote a play I was in or the publication of my autobiography, To the Stars. But more frequently, I’d been “on” because of bandit recordings. Once, Howard surreptitiously recorded me while on the phone with a celebrity imitator pretending, absurdly, to be Ricardo Montalban.

  Howard Stern has had his fun with me, and his listeners seemed to be having a hilarious good time listening to his mischief at my expense. I got points for being a good sport, I suppose. The Stern Show techies even spliced my voice from the audiocassette version of my autobiography and manipulated the words to make it seem like I was uttering outrageously obscene statements. They claim they did all this because they love me, but I must say, I’ve never been loved in such a bizarre fashion.

  Howard also seemed to have fallen in love with me saying “Oh my!” whenever he said or did something outrageous, like when he asked one voluptuous young woman on his show to take her bra off. “Oh my!” What else could I say? It was even more apt when she did. “Oh my!” indeed. Howard, for some unfathomable reason, thought my reflexive “Oh my!” was hilarious. So he played a recording of it over and over again — even when I wasn’t on the show. I thought it was silly, but it was also admittedly quite droll.

  I first realized “Oh my!” was becoming personally linked with me when I went on a national book tour for To the Stars. Young men who had patiently stood in line for my autograph would slip the book toward me with roguishly insinuating smiles and ask me to sign it with “Oh my!” I knew right away they were Howard Stern fans and realized then that it had become my signature phrase.

  “Oh my!” goes beyond a response of amusement or surprise. It is also an expression of awe and wonder. Our world is full of amazing phenomena: a stunningly rapturous sunrise, a night sky spangled with stardust, the fiery beauty of a volcanic lava flow. They all merit a “Oh my!” Humankind’s imagination and innovation is truly breathtaking. Today we take for granted technology that was mere science fiction just over four decades ago on Star Trek. I am a 75-year old man who grew up transported by adventures I experienced with my ears glued to the radio. When black and white television was introduced, that was a sensational “Oh my!” event. We could see a movie on a round screen in a box in our own living room. What a groundbreaking invention!

  Our dazzling tech-driven society today stimulates and inspires me. We have become instantaneously interconnected, not only with other people of this earth, but with far-off planets. A robot we created is now roving the surface of Mars and sending back photos to us on Earth — what an amazing achievement. I want to revel in and enjoy this “Oh my!” world — so much so, that I’ve begun to accentuate the very phrase. As we all know, the addition of a few Ys adds a certain je ne sais quoi. “Hey” simply doesn’t quite carry the same suggestive appeal in a text message as the more inviting “Heyyy.” And with that, “Oh myyy!” was born.

  As many a fan has posted on my Facebook wall,

  © skala, © fotografie4you.eu, © Alexey Gnezdilov - Fotolia.com. Used with Permission

  Don’t worry, it took me a while to get this, too.

  Status Symbolism

  Social media depends on the act of sharing. “Duh,” you say. But what is less clear is why we choose to share things through our social networks. Sure, we want to keep our friends and families current, particularly when something significant happens. “I got a job promotion.” “I’m a mom again.” “I need bail money.” But that hardly scratches the surface of our modern sharing rituals.

  Once upon a time, we had to call or write to everyone we knew with such news. More dutiful friends shared an annual family photo and penned lengthy, form Christmas letters, complete with a “Dear X” salutation (likely filled in by hand in textbook cursive) and a yearly summary of their notable achievements and news (usually in hard-to-read italic typeset on even harder-to-read blue or red paper). Those chestnuts are rather scarce now in this age of status posting. Perhaps those same people today could simply email a holiday greeting with a link to their Facebook Timelines, all major Life Events carefully laid out, each album informatively and accurately titled, each photo auto-enhanced with red-eye removed.

  But beyond important news, let’s face it: Facebook and Twitter are filled with information no one really needs to know. “At the gym.” “Ate donuts for dinner.” “Got shingles.”

  It’s harder to understand why people post this information, and admittedly harder still to understand why we continue to devour it on a daily basis. We post in the sincere hope of providing others a more honest and open sense of who we are, from the very special moments to the mundane. Sharing is an act of trust, for ridicule is an ever-present risk on the Internet today. But I’ve recently concluded that sharing is also often an act of deception. More on that later.

  On a deeper level, the sharing of our lives on a daily basis is a statement of our values and of what makes us tick. In so doing, friends who are far away may feel close by, and long lost acquaintances or relationships may resurface, often with alarming results.

  It is easy to underestimate the impact our hyper-connectivity has upon us as individuals and on the human species in general. We are naturally social creatures, but at least until recently our social interactions were limited to those we saw, spoke to, worked with, and slept with (or stopped sleeping with) daily. In the networked world, there are fewer Eleanor Rigbys to sing about, for even the loneliest amon
g us can venture out with relative anonymity and find solace in the comfort of others’ lives, particularly if those lives appear equally mundane. By the way, if you don’t know who Eleanor Rigby is, you probably were born after 1985 and need to listen to some real music.

  There is a voyeuristic quality to it all as well. Before we had Facebook, we began our obsession with reality television, where we followed the lives of complete strangers and watched their dramas unfold, breathless with anticipation for the next meltdown. Smartly edited by experienced producers, these shows made television audiences feel as if they had been invited into someone else’s world. And here’s the rub: by witnessing the rawness of the emotions, on full display for us all to take in, these “real” people felt like our colleagues, our friends, our families.

  Facebook and Twitter started out like poorly funded cable access reality shows, running 24/7 with limited but ever-increasing commercial interruption. But instead of seeing the daily drama of strangers, we reveled in the streaming peeks into the lives of those we actually knew, one finger pressed firmly on the pulses of their existence. It became easier than ever to compare our own lives to theirs, and to see if the grass really was greener.

  But things morphed quickly on Facebook due to a little button called “like.” The only real way we could tell whether anyone cared about what we did was if friends hit that button. Our Facebook experience became, as they say, “game-ified.” Rather quickly, the savvier “producers” among us began to edit and present their lives to achieve more “likes”. Instead of a moment-to-moment transparent view, we began to receive the edited docudrama. Popularity in the Facebook schoolyard could be measured in thumbs-ups — or more recently, the more difficult-to-value number of “subscribers.” For many hapless users, their own lives began to appear dull, or worse still, not like-worthy, when stacked against the smart, glamorous and Instagram-filtered vacations of friends and colleagues. All of life’s insecurities, long ago tucked safely away after years of wisdom or expensive therapy, welled right back up again with each page refresh.

  In short, social media soon became more about being media savvy, and less about being social. Hollywood caught on quickly. Celebrities and their handlers began to use social media to open carefully constructed windows into their lives — enough to titillate but not really enlighten. Fans followed, hoping for bits of insight and, if lucky, the occasional hastily tweeted, then suddenly retracted, outburst.

  But this was just a commercial reflection of a growing social phenomenon. Indeed, when you think about it, on a broader level each of us now makes the decisions of a celebrity. With each post or tweet, we choose what to keep private and what to make public, what face to show the world and what to keep buried. It is a kind of deception, and we have become reality stars, every one of us.

  Speaking from personal experience, having any social media presence followed by thousands or even millions of people is not for the faint of heart; one drunken tweet or post, and the gig is up. I’ve unintentionally shared pictures meant for a select group of friends that, to my horror, went out to tens of thousands of fans before I could delete them. Oh myyy, indeed.

  Facebook wised up and started permitting “filters” — privacy settings that one had to master like a second language. Friends and family were divided into those who could know everything, some things, or almost nothing. Each post thereafter carried with it a critical decision: Make public (and get the most attention), or limit severely (and save your dignity). There are many who have simply refused to apply such filters and are living their lives out publicly and unabashedly — what I call the “Lindsay Lohan Effect.” We love these people. We really do.

  Apart from the privacy concerns, I decided a while back that my life simply wasn’t interesting enough on a day-to-day level to update others in real time. No one would really care to know what I ate for breakfast or which movie I went to see — and if they did, I really didn’t want them commenting about it. Instead, I set out simply to share with my fans many of the funny or inspiring things I came across. What I didn’t realize at the time was that, by sharing these posts, I could grow a whole community that didn’t exist before.

  It started, of course, with science fiction fans, especially long-time Trekkies who were happy to experience some kind of regular contact with Mr. Sulu. I owe my career to these fans, and I have never understood actors who don’t take the time to acknowledge and thank them. On Twitter and Facebook, I soon learned I could go one step further and actually interact with fans everyday. One of my earliest posts on Twitter garnered much attention and basically launched my online journey:

  Fans seemed genuinely surprised and delighted that a man of my, let’s say, “maturity” would get himself a Twitter account and start putting it out there. I recall gaining thousands of fans in a single day and being at the top of the Twitter homepage for a few short but glorious hours. And I must say, for the first month it was all pretty much fun and games, with humorous posts about current events and my own odd take on them. That all changed one fateful day in March of 2011, when I was awakened by a friend who alerted me to the tragedy of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. That was the first time I learned the true value and power of the social network: an open channel of communication that can not only entertain but also unite us in a common cause, from responding to a disaster to — as the Arab Spring showed us — toppling a government.

  That morning, as I witnessed the extent of the devastation in Japan, I put out the following tweet, in the hopes of raising money for disaster relief:

  That simple plea, sent out to my modest fan-base of some 30,000 mostly Star Trek followers, echoed and reverberated beyond all expectation. Celebrities took up the call, retweeting it to their fans and thus around the world in a matter of minutes. I don’t know how many people actually texted to donate, but I did hear that individual donations topped over $7 million in the first few days. And even more unexpectedly, my own Twitter account became a type of Ground Zero for information, where I could retweet information about missing persons, the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima reactor, and the grim casualty counts from outlying areas.

  I was new to Twitter, so it came as a surprise that news outlets were following my tweets. CNN called that next day, asking for an interview. As the most prominent Japanese American actor and activist out there on the social media — not a hard spot to occupy, admittedly — it suddenly fell to me to spearhead the social media campaign. I followed up the Twitter work with a YouTube video, hastily assembled by my team of producers at my show Allegiance (who were kind enough to lend their logistical support — you’ll hear a lot about them in this book, for without them I don’t know how I’d have put much of my media together). The video took some of the most compelling pictures of the disaster, including amazing rescue and recovery efforts and examples of the selfless and stoic response of the Japanese people, and coupled them with another plea for assistance. Over 100,000 people watched that video within the first day of its release.

  The disaster relief campaign taught me an early lesson in the power of social media, one that I have carried with me since. With just a few thousand fans, amplified by the power of Twitter, I was able to make a real difference in the lives of millions, as well as alert traditional media to our efforts. I soon thought to myself, “If I can make such an impact with just a few thousand fans, why not reach out and build a larger platform?” There was much work to be done, and causes near and dear to my heart that I wanted to speak out on. The question of same-sex marriage, for example, was reaching a critical crossroads. I also wanted to fulfill what I consider one of my life’s missions: to ensure that the history and lessons of the Japanese American internment never be forgotten.

  Fundamentally, I wanted to build a community that could laugh, share and discuss the pressing matters of society. Already on my Facebook page, fans were beginning to post very funny science- and science fiction-related images, called “memes” by the digerati. In the early days of my
Facebook page, I would receive a dozen or so wall posts a day and sift through them, downloading the images I found particularly funny or inspiring. I never really knew at the time whether I would ever use them; I just enjoyed keeping them and laughing over them with Brad later (I’ve included many examples of these memes in this book, some of which I’ve had to revise or recreate because of a little thing called copyright).

  But like my experience with the tsunami and Twitter, I soon found myself acting as a central gathering spot — a “node” if you will — for sharing some of the Internet’s funniest memes. I say that knowing full well that I did not create any of these images; they were all sent to me by others. But there is real value in sharing — and real rewards. The number of fans on my Facebook page leapt from 25,000 to over 100,000 in a matter of days as word spread that Sulu had started a page and had “some pretty funny shit” on it, as many a fan wrote on my wall.

  I must admit, at first I was quite taken aback by the number of shares and likes on each post, and I had to limit myself to just a few a day so as not to get too sucked in. It also took me months to understand what all the fuss and appeal was about. Fans had to explain it to me: Having Sulu as a Facebook “friend” was like “having a favorite gay uncle” — one with a somewhat naughty sense of humor.

  “Okay, I get that,” I said. And with that, my Internet career was born.

  Twitter Sniping

  When I first began sharing online, I spent a great deal of time on Twitter. I had no idea what I was doing, let alone whether anyone would want to read anything I tweeted. I hoped to say something that might rise above the fray, and do it in 140 characters or less. And I was delighted when fans responded, welcoming me to the Twitterverse. I even made sure each new follower received a thank you from me (eventually I had to discontinue this). I made a conscious decision, however, not to “follow” each fan who gave me a follow, as I knew it would quickly become impossible to read through my Twitter stream each day. I hoped fans would understand.