I need to talk about something lighthearted after all of the news of these past few weeks, and this one has been on my mind since mid-April.
You remember mid-April, right? We were all so innocent then. The WH hadn't yet announced its "zero tolerance" policy of forced separation, and Brad Pitt was trying to roll out MIT professor Dr. Neri Oxman as his next girlfriend (or something like that. I'm still not quite sure what the Pitt PR team was thinking about with this stunt, given that Dr. Oxman had a billionaire boyfriend at the time).
The gossip blogs back then called out Pitt's PR strategy as textbook plagiarism of George Clooney's rollout of Amal Alamuddin as his girlfriend all those many years ago. And then a few of them linked to an instagram account with the username of nerioxman. It's a lovely account, with lots of professional images of Dr. Oxman and her designs. And there's no way in hell it's actually her account.
Let me tell you a story about Instagram. This past spring, a person who had been trying to follow me for two years was able to finally get in touch with me to offer to purchase my username. He had a good pitch and was going to monetize the name, so I thought it over, settled on a price, and changed my instagram handle.
Dr. Oxman has been on Twitter since December 2015. She doesn't have a little blue checkmark, but her tweets all read in that intentionally obscure language of academic jargon used by people who love playing around with complicated words to express complicated ideas.
Page Six first published a story about Pitt + Dr. Oxman on April 5. The nerioxman Instagram account that I am referring to posted its first image on April 10. Someone opened an Instagram account within those five days and did a google search for all of Dr. Oxman's photo shoots. They published several images rapid-fire, but have only posted a few images in the past month. I imagine the account was opened in the hopes that either Oxman herself or someone from Pitt's PR team would pay good money to purchase the handle.
Pity for that person that Pitt and Dr. Oxman aren't actually dating.
PS: Based on a sample of all the academics and artists who I follow on Instagram, an account actually owned by Dr. Oxman would be far more interesting than professional glamor shots.
You remember mid-April, right? We were all so innocent then. The WH hadn't yet announced its "zero tolerance" policy of forced separation, and Brad Pitt was trying to roll out MIT professor Dr. Neri Oxman as his next girlfriend (or something like that. I'm still not quite sure what the Pitt PR team was thinking about with this stunt, given that Dr. Oxman had a billionaire boyfriend at the time).
The gossip blogs back then called out Pitt's PR strategy as textbook plagiarism of George Clooney's rollout of Amal Alamuddin as his girlfriend all those many years ago. And then a few of them linked to an instagram account with the username of nerioxman. It's a lovely account, with lots of professional images of Dr. Oxman and her designs. And there's no way in hell it's actually her account.
Let me tell you a story about Instagram. This past spring, a person who had been trying to follow me for two years was able to finally get in touch with me to offer to purchase my username. He had a good pitch and was going to monetize the name, so I thought it over, settled on a price, and changed my instagram handle.
Dr. Oxman has been on Twitter since December 2015. She doesn't have a little blue checkmark, but her tweets all read in that intentionally obscure language of academic jargon used by people who love playing around with complicated words to express complicated ideas.
Page Six first published a story about Pitt + Dr. Oxman on April 5. The nerioxman Instagram account that I am referring to posted its first image on April 10. Someone opened an Instagram account within those five days and did a google search for all of Dr. Oxman's photo shoots. They published several images rapid-fire, but have only posted a few images in the past month. I imagine the account was opened in the hopes that either Oxman herself or someone from Pitt's PR team would pay good money to purchase the handle.
Pity for that person that Pitt and Dr. Oxman aren't actually dating.
PS: Based on a sample of all the academics and artists who I follow on Instagram, an account actually owned by Dr. Oxman would be far more interesting than professional glamor shots.
No comments:
Post a Comment