WarrenZ
The Ultimate Bad Example
One problem SCUBA is kind of like submarine racing kind of hard to watch.
Why Aren't There Scuba Celebrities?
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I'm pretty sure Tiger is full cave. I hear celebrities every now and then talking about diving but none really promoting it. Definitely Cousteau and Sheck though!
I would not hold Tiger up as any kind of role model. Horn dog whose wife tried to brain him with a golf club (3 wood I would choose) for his screwing around.
My own idols are Cousteau and Lloyd Bridges.
I admire some of the people who do the exploratory stuff like and the pioneers like Gary Gentile, Sheck Exley, Jill, Richie Kohler, John Chatterton, Tom Mount, and others. I could rattle off a bunch more names of people like these I have met. Some I know well. A few are friends. But as others have said, outside the dive community the living ones are virtually unknown.
Society is more concerned with sensationalized, celebrity lowlifes like the Kardashians, West's, and other Hollywood trash whose real claim to fame is being unfaithful, causing trouble, or just being fools.
My own idols are Cousteau and Lloyd Bridges.
I admire some of the people who do the exploratory stuff like and the pioneers like Gary Gentile, Sheck Exley, Jill, Richie Kohler, John Chatterton, Tom Mount, and others. I could rattle off a bunch more names of people like these I have met. Some I know well. A few are friends. But as others have said, outside the dive community the living ones are virtually unknown.
Society is more concerned with sensationalized, celebrity lowlifes like the Kardashians, West's, and other Hollywood trash whose real claim to fame is being unfaithful, causing trouble, or just being fools.
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It's all about creating "the public image".
If you ask the man-on-the street to name a SCUBA diver, if they are old enough, they might recall Cousteau. Might.
The only one to have successfully accomplished this was JYC.
Lloyd Bridges may have had similar impact, but the intended end-effect of his media product was not as was that of Cousteau's Silent World.
To keep diving, JYC needed money. The carefully crafted & generated media image was the source of funding.
There are a whole lot of vidiots out there who are getting good imagery, but have no idea of what it takes to "make a TV show". PBS prolly has a special phone line, just for them. (Go raise your own money, produce your 26 minute show, maybe we'll have a look, but before we'll buy it, we'll need 5 more shows and a lot of changes)
Cousteau's media presence was 80% his own cult following (plus 18% harrowing danger, 2% SCUBA is interesting), so he was a "celebrity". Being parodied on SNL and Zissou (the closing credits disclaimer notwithstanding) confirmed this.
There are no SCUBA Celebrities, at least on the mass market scale, because no-one else has figured out how to make it work financially.
Doubilet (who?) is eeking out a living. Any others? Giddings who? (He even tried Supermodels in wet rubber suits. Fail.)
How many can you (or your non-SCUBA friends) name? http://www.scubahalloffame.com/main.html
In a micro scale, look at all of our associates who are avid u/w shooters, all the way from old Ektachrome guys, to our fellow airline passengers with Pelican cases full of SLRs and GoPros.
Everybody is going to be famous.
As much as we here get around in the industry, people only remember my traveling companion, SCUBA Barbie (#2 from the left)
The guy on the left has had substantial impact on many hundreds of readers here, impact as in: they have met him and entrusted their lives to him. Celebrity?
If you ask the man-on-the street to name a SCUBA diver, if they are old enough, they might recall Cousteau. Might.
The only one to have successfully accomplished this was JYC.
Lloyd Bridges may have had similar impact, but the intended end-effect of his media product was not as was that of Cousteau's Silent World.
To keep diving, JYC needed money. The carefully crafted & generated media image was the source of funding.
There are a whole lot of vidiots out there who are getting good imagery, but have no idea of what it takes to "make a TV show". PBS prolly has a special phone line, just for them. (Go raise your own money, produce your 26 minute show, maybe we'll have a look, but before we'll buy it, we'll need 5 more shows and a lot of changes)
Cousteau's media presence was 80% his own cult following (plus 18% harrowing danger, 2% SCUBA is interesting), so he was a "celebrity". Being parodied on SNL and Zissou (the closing credits disclaimer notwithstanding) confirmed this.
There are no SCUBA Celebrities, at least on the mass market scale, because no-one else has figured out how to make it work financially.
Doubilet (who?) is eeking out a living. Any others? Giddings who? (He even tried Supermodels in wet rubber suits. Fail.)
How many can you (or your non-SCUBA friends) name? http://www.scubahalloffame.com/main.html
In a micro scale, look at all of our associates who are avid u/w shooters, all the way from old Ektachrome guys, to our fellow airline passengers with Pelican cases full of SLRs and GoPros.
Everybody is going to be famous.
As much as we here get around in the industry, people only remember my traveling companion, SCUBA Barbie (#2 from the left)
The guy on the left has had substantial impact on many hundreds of readers here, impact as in: they have met him and entrusted their lives to him. Celebrity?
AlexL
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don't forget Linus Torvalds, author / head hauncho of Linux kernel development, diver, and original author of subsurface (also free as in beer and speech).
without him (and a cast of thousands), scubaboard would not have a free operating system to the forum software on, and would require a LOT more ads to pay for that windows server CAL.
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Maybe notorious would be a better way to describe Kohler, Chatterton, Exley, Martinez, etc....
Jill Heinerth | IntoThePlanet
Check her out. Google her and her achievements. Jill even has a Wikipedia page. And quite a lovely person as well. A personal hero to me.
Check her out. Google her and her achievements. Jill even has a Wikipedia page. And quite a lovely person as well. A personal hero to me.
Mudd
Registered
Perhaps there should be a reality tv show where a rag-tag group of divers (selected exclusively for personal conflicts, drama, and photogenic qualities) are assembled to dive various locations around the world, bicker over proper placement of gear, fall in and out of love, and make "private confessions" over petty things, all while being filmed by a camera crew.
"Celebrity" these days does not equal role model, based on the magazine covers in the supermarket / drug store aisles I've seen.
"Celebrity" these days does not equal role model, based on the magazine covers in the supermarket / drug store aisles I've seen.
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It was done a couple years back. Cozumel, lots of manufactured drama, super scary fish, dopey host, cute hostess, very standard of divers, some with all the patches. Contrived activities for people in rubber suits. The participants even paid their own way to be in it.
What a country.
UDC, it was called, Ultimate Diver Challenge, or Unbelievably Dumb Crap, something or the other.
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