Pussyhands wrote: » If you need a bag on your head for people to listen to you, then you don't deserve to be listened to.
Pussyhands wrote: » Blindboy claiming he has social anxiety and afraid to leave his house. At the same time he's plastering himself all over the media. How's that?
Man Vs ManUre wrote: » Jeez Blind Bag, chill out a bit. It’s not all that serious.
jimwallace197 wrote: » Nearly spat my tea out at Blindboy saying that he's an artist, if thats what passes for an artist nowadays we truly are f**ked.
Deleted User wrote: » But as far as I know this is not the reason for the bag at all. So the "if" in your statement above is quite an important one, no? The keyword then is "social" anxiety. Being on the media is not a "social" situation. What is "not all that serious" exactly? Mental Health issues during a pandemic? Or something else said in the interview? Not sure what you mean? How are you defining "art" exactly and how does his work - including his music and his fiction - not qualify?
Pussyhands wrote: » How is being in the media not social??
Pussyhands wrote: » tell me so why he has the bag? If your words mean different things with a bag on your head then it's not the words people are listening to.
Deleted User wrote: » Because quite often you are talking to nothing more than a microphone or a camera. Or on stage you are talking one way to an audience - not the two way communication of an actual social interaction. And in fact in many stage settings you can not even _see_ the audience when they are there due to how the lighting works. So rather than "How is being in the media not social" I could reverse the question and ask "How _is_ it social?" Even in an interview setting it is very artificial and formulaic. So not really a social interaction either. I would not consider an interviewer/interviewee scenario a social interaction. Certainly more so than most media appearances - for sure - but still not quite social either. For example I myself have always been shy and awkward socially. I have worked on this and I hide it well now - but inside I am quite a turmoil at house parties and so forth. But I have _zero_ problem getting on a stage in front of 500 people. Media appearances have very little of the aspects of a social interaction that would trigger the issues someone with social anxiety has. I see no issue therefore that someone with social anxiety can still be a media personality. These things are not mutually exclusive at all. Very little of what would trigger someone with social anxiety is present in a media situation. Van Morrison and Mick Flannery jump to mind as people who are intensely shy. But they have no issue getting on a stage and making music. Quite simply because he has social anxiety issues and does not want to be recognizable outside his media work. He has spoken time and time again about how horrible he feels when people work out who he is. And how the idea of people coming up to him in public because they recognize him fills him with total horror. Instead he can now walk around on a college campus - or down the aisle in Lidl - with a near zero chance anyone is going to walk up to him for an autograph - a selfie - or some other social interaction he does not want. In fact he has claimed in the past - though I do not know how true it is - that his direct next door neighbor does not even know he is "Blindboy". He has done a few celebrity interviews in the past actually - people like Spike Lee and so on - and a few of them expressed their jealousy for the anonymity his bag gives him too. So he is hardly alone in this either. The celebrities he has interviewed have sometimes said they with they could be anonymous like he is.
Pussyhands wrote: » A lot of people know what he looks like without the bag, so they'd see him out anyways.
Pussyhands wrote: » He could even keep the bag but use his real voice..it's not gonna reveal his identity.
Pussyhands wrote: » Take the bag off his head and speak in his normal accent and no one gives a **** what he says and that's a fact, he's just another lad with a podcast.
Deleted User wrote: » I have no stats on that myself. And I suspect nor do you. I suspect the words "a lot" here are deeply subjective and imaginative in fact. I am aware that you can find pictures of him if you actively go looking for them. I have never gone looking for them. So I have no idea how true it is - nor do you or I know how many people have bothered to do so. But one or two pictures you see one time having gone looking for them - is not the same as seeing a face on television many times. I doubt it would make someone instantly recognisable in the same way as some old lady is gonna spot her favourite Fair City actor on the street. I have heard him on a few occasions say that people who do identify him - identify him by his voice. So it seems whatever his "real" voice is like - it may not be as different to the voice he uses in media as you seem to think. Even then though - even if we imagine his actual voice is profoundly different to his media voice - how the hell would we know (other than wanton imagination) that his real voice would not make him recognisable? I can think of a large number of Irish and UK radio personalities I would instantly recognise if I heard their voice in public. In fact it has happened on more than one occasion where I was in a public place and I heard a voice and new exactly who it was before I turned around. (Ray Darcy, Pat Kenny, Tony Fenton, Gerry Ryan, Larry Gogan, Ian Dempsey and Dave Fanning are all people I have heard in public places. Though Dave Fanning was the only one I felt moved to actually walk up and meet). So saying "that's a fact" does not make it magically turn into a fact. The "fact" is that you and I simply do not know what his media or market presence would be if he changed his image. You are just making it up as true because you want it to be true. Simple as. Plus actual facts seem to go against your theory too. The first being that his podcast has 4 times as many listeners outside Ireland as inside - where many people would have little idea about his visual appearance and would have even less reason to particularly care about his voice. While his book was a bestseller and that has nothing to do with his accent either. It's. A. Book. And the BBC have commissioned shows with him despite the fact their mainly UK audience would know little or nothing about the Limerick accent. So it would seem to me there is little at all in the way of evidence to support your alternate reality and you are projecting your own obsession with his "bag" onto other people - particularly his fanbase - and making assumptions from the result that they are as hyper-cognizant of it as you are. When in fact it would seem the people who actually do enjoy his work (which is not me as it happens as I have not read his book, have no interest in reading his book, particular dislike the genre of music he works in, and would find him a relatively amateur player in that genre anyway even if I did enjoy it) barely notice it's existence in the first place - or care when they do notice it. But I guess the "bag" does give people a way to dismiss anything he has to say - without actually mentioning, rebutting, addressing, considering, or faulting anything he actually has to say. It is easy to pretend what he says would be worthless without the bag - for pretence is all it is - and thus avoid having to actually point out a single thing wrong with anything he has to say or deal with the fact that what he says gets listened to because there is genuinely an audience (for whatever reason) out there for it. Take this thread here as a case in point. Go back over all the posts who mentioned his appearance on the show. How many of them mentioned - let alone actively faulted - a single thing he said? Did anyone? Or was it simply a series of ad hominem against his appearance and career titles? If that tells you nothing - then the fact it tells you nothing should tell you something
mgn wrote: » This thread is for comments on the Claire Byrne show, not a Blindboy appreciation thread, Maybe you should set up a fan club for yourself/him.
[Deleted User] wrote: » If I am off topic I will allow the mods to deal with that. I will not get caught up in a back seat modding issue with another user. Not sure why I would require a fan club having already pointed out I have not read his book nor do I want to - and I not only deeply dislike the genres of music he works in but find him to be a particularly amateur instance of those genres. I am hardly a fan of him or his brand. But I am not ignorant of his work either. But I find little to no truth or basis behind the criticisms of his appearance on this show (either here on this thread or the recent Indo article about it) or about his general appearance referred to off the back of his appearance on this show. And both of these things are - unless the mods differ in their view - directly on topic for this thread. We are discussing both his appearance on the show - and aspects of his general brand as seen on the show. How is this off topic? But I am happy to raise it as a question with the mods and defer to their opinion on the matter.
Man Vs ManUre wrote: » Have you ever thought about writing a book about this blind bag fella??
Atlantic Dawn wrote: » 1 Covid related death in UK today, they need to cop ta fook on here.
touts wrote: » Wonder how many of that crowd partying today are on the PUP. Send in the public order unit with batons drawn. Put ten lads in A&E and 20 of their mates in Mountjoy on public order offences and this problem goes away.
Cluedo Monopoly wrote: » Even the adverts during Claire Byrne Live feature Claire Byrne. Her shows should be renamed to Clare Byrne Omnipresent.
Man Vs ManUre wrote: » But which Joey has bigger lips, o’callaghan or o’brien??
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://wb.vanillicon.com/v2/b605825002726fa398519aca553ff0db.svg)
