Worldwide appeal of Robin Williams via blog stats & important UPDATE.

What tuppenceworth I posted in my last post regarding the passing of Robin Williams resulted in traffic to this blog dropping to a complete zero, even from China.  It's quite clear that I wasn't somebody slobbering over what I know was an illusion; one of the reasons I prefer being a time traveler to an  historian is my appreciation of cold hard facts, not some biographer's embrace of whatever illusion any given public figure preferred to project and then run with.  I recognize illusions and mirages when I see them, and as I've had a few friends of mine attempting or accomplishing suicide in the distant past, I've had the experience with the issues in that regard.

I still expected traffic from the orient, the hackers, the spammers, the tech-heads among them, but even that traffic dropped to zero over night.  That. people, was today's surprise.

Robin Williams was indeed the master of illusion, as are all good actors who engage the audience and take them along for the ride of the presentations are.  Therein lay Williams' very strong appeal--they were strong illusions.  But they were still illusions, and that's why I for one wasn't a bit surprised while everyone else was.  The cold hard truth of the matter is that nobody in the audience knew what this man REALLY was like, and just the statistics alone, of his 3 different wives pretty much showed conclusively that they thought they knew him but in the end, didn't really.

Although I'm familiar with his schtick and the apparent genius of his various schticks, and enjoyed that like everybody else, I know that I did not know this person. If you find that I have any stuff about Robin Williams off-base, that's fine because I don't pretend to know people that I don't really.

It's easy for a member of the audience to love the illusion.  What's hard is dealing with the cold hard reality, and it's the cold hard reality of actually getting to know the real person which will cure a lot of that.  And so it comes as no surprise to me that fans prefer to hold on to the illusion and bury the reality; a performer's business is to serve up what the audience wants to see, and the audience wants to see--and prefers--the illusion.

Thursday UPDATE: Ya, I realize that the above missive sounds harsh, but you won't catch me pretending to know stuff and people that I know I don't, and I've observed a number of people doing just that.  I don't wish to be included in that group, but by all means include me in the group that describes the ordinary fan.  I'm certainly a fan.  But coming down the pike this Thursday is a posting by somebody who apparently did know this man in actual fact, as shared by somebody that I do know, and his remarks are well worth full consideration:

I would be surprised of those of us of a certain age, who do remember the 60s and 70s, didn't know somebody who had experimented with substances and came out on the wrong side as a result.  I had a number of friends like that including one gal who attempted suicide in the presence of a number of her friends and yet still declared that she was alone and that nobody cared even after a bunch of us showed up when the ambulance did.  It is possible to not have known Mr. Williams personally and still relate deeply to the situation he found himself in.  Don't  know the guy, but I fully understand.  While everybody else seemed surprised and shocked, I wasn't--and that's just it, in a nutshell.

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Ferguson UPDATE: All hell's broken loose as if Assad moved from Syria to Missouri and is now in command of the police there.  It's probably just a matter of time before an order is given to fire tear gas canisters into a crowded van just like Assad did. Betcha.