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To be? Chicken. To eat? Also chicken.
You have recently risen from toiling in obscurity to become a low or mid-level celebrity in your chosen entertainment field. You frequently get column inches in newspapers around the world, feature in celeb photo-pages and are the subject of several rumours a year. Because of this attention, as certain doors have opened, other have obviously closed. People are aware enough of who you are that your opinions, even in the most casual of conversations, are coloured with your image as presented by the media.
The only exchange of ideas you've managed to keep untainted happens to be a message board, which board you've been a member since its inception some years ago. You've never met any of the other members, nor told them enough about yourself for them to figure out who you really are, but you know enough about each other so that the bonds you've formed feel like real friendship. Because you have a slightly "alternative" slant to your work, you're well respected by the board and often talked about favourably - getting cast for cool roles if you're an actor, adapting works to the screen if a screenwriter, etc. You never engage in those conversations beyond a simple "Yeah, that would be cool" or "No way, ze's totally wrong for that project!"
Recently a rumour with no basis in reality has broken out in the news. It is sufficiently bad - and hard to spin into a positive - that it brings you more notoriety than ever before - accusations of paedophilia, rape, being a neo-nazi/white supremacist, murder or the like. Your PR people are busy releasing statements and trying to quash the gossip, but because of your alternative persona, the mainstream press seems eager to propagate and fuel the controversy. The message board is filled with discussion of the incident with a lot of people leaning to the view that you are indeed guilty of the foul act/s. People you considered friends are saying things about your real persona which you find quite hurtful and upsetting.
Do you:
a) out yourself to refute the allegations and retain your cool status but lose the only haven for free conversation you had, or;
b) stay quiet and risk not only losing your cool status but becoming part of negative board-slang: "What are you, so-and-so?"; "Yeah, that's just what so-and-so said right after they busted hir." |
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