The Friends or the Fame

Well, this week has been a productive one. 4 successful and productive rehearsals for a new Shakespeare show I'm acting in that will open at the end of March. I shot 2 student films, went to 4 auditions and am currently gearing up to go to Rochester this Sunday to be in this year's RCT production of "And Then They Came for Me."

If you are my friend on Facebook, or follow the few tweets I post (I am still quite Twitter retarded and constantly put it down out of frustration,) you already know these things. I usually keep my friends back home in the know by trying to update when I am doing a show or going to an audition. No one uses the phone these days, so it is the easiest way to tell everyone at once what I'm up to. Now if only my grandparents would get a smart phone I wouldn't ever feel guilty for not getting back home more.

And then today I finally saw "The Social Network" and it got me thinking. Facebook was originally created to meet girls and guys in college and find out if they were single. It was basically an exclusive school dating site. A place to see who was hot and who was not and who had more friends than who. A popularity contest. Like superlatives in high school, "best smile," "worst car." I'm not exactly sure why Twitter was created, but I am guessing it's something close to the same, only this time reduced to 140 characters.

So how important are these sites to one's career? Especially a career in the entertainment business? In a world where Charlie Sheen got over one million Twitter followers in 48 hours because he goes crazy and Snooki ends up on the cover of Rolling Stone, how important is it for someone pursuing a career in acting to focus on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook? Is it a popularity contest or do you still have to have some kind of talent? On top of acting classes, voice lessons, dance practice, going to the gym to stay fit, reading up on the latest plays, seeing the latest movies, being attractive, easy to work with, fun to be around, intelligent and witty and charming and all of the other things that the world insists an actor must be - you also have to have a million Twitter followers and a max on Facebook friends? If this is true, my next question is which comes first; The friends or the fame?