For a great many folks, the only time they may have encountered spreadsheet software at all was in a school computer literacy class, and even then...
Unless you are in her industry, there are probably tons of things she knows about you and I don't - like good brands of music sheets, mixing desks or microphones.
Excel is known, by a certain selection of office workers.
By not being in a office-work career field.
Good argument
She signed a record deal at age 14, back at a time when knowing how to power on a computer was seen as a specialized office skill.
> she's the one who is using it
She isn't a director, and likely had no role in preparing props.
She just has better things to do than care about something this stupid.
There is a difference between endorsing a product and acting in an ad for a product. The latter is an acted out sketch.
To be ultra-pedantic, one can same the same (just in a different way) for paid endorsements. But I hope the factual difference between the two is obvious enough to not need further explanation.
Consider that the relationship works both ways, the celebrity's own brand is tarnished by involvement with a product hit by scandal. See the celebrities that promoted FTX as an example. It is in their own interest to do some due diligence.
Conversely, the ads would be dropped if the celebrity actor became toxic. If Kelly Rowland made Kanye-style comments about Nazis or Jews, the ad would be buried. Are Kevin Spacey ads still airing?
The entire celebrity/influencer marketing system intentionally exploits a failure mode of human cognitive bias for profit. Transactional endorsements are morally bankrupt. A family member or friend that blindly recommended a product or service for pay would lose respect for that breach of trust. Celebrities that people respect should be held to the same or higher standards.
Consider this, if John Carmack regularly did ads playing a generic software engineer at BigCo and it turned out he didn't even know what the products were, would this community hold him in the same high regard?
Or as the old capitalist saying goes: We know they are telling us bullshit, they know they are telling us bullshit, they know we know they are telling us bullshit, we know they know we know they are telling us bullshit, but we are still buying their product ;)
Now, Nokia could have been paying her to use their phone during the music video - product placement is a thing, and you can see the brand logo in the shot. But I suspect if they were, Nokia's brand reps probably wouldn't have wanted a shot of a popular R&B singer trying to text from a spreadsheet and would have made sure the shot looked better to protect their brand.
If it's not Nokia she's "endorsing", then presumably it's Excel. That fails on the basis that she probably wouldn't have been using Excel on the phone. As noted in jgc's blog post, it's likely the built-in spreadsheet software in Symbian. Either way, it isn't distinctly Excel - it's a generic spreadsheet app with no particular visual distinctiveness that would pick it out as Excel. People only say it's Excel because that's the spreadsheet they're most familiar with.
(Incidentally, I'm all for ensuring celebrities who do paid endorsements are doing so responsibly. There ought to be some consequences for the public figures who used their fame to push cryptoscams including Tom Brady, Matt Damon, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian etc. if only so it prompts their agents to think twice and do some due diligence in the future.)
I believe it is a fairly clear example of product placement, which is a form of advertisement. Like, when I see Andrew Garfield playing the role of Spiderman and having shots of him using Bing in those movies, there is no way I could consider it anything but product placement/ad.
Sure, there are less clear-cut edge cases in music, such as rappers namedropping luxury brands like LV, Ferrari, Rolex, etc., but at this point it is a part of the identity of the genre.
But overall, I think it is pretty obvious that when a brand/logo gets prominently featured in media such as movies, music videos, etc., it is for product placement purposes. And in cases when it isn't, taking it as a personal endorsement is kind of silly. For me, personal endorsement is cleanly defined as using and/or recommending products explicitly, outside of "fictional" media you produce (e.g., MKBHD reviewing tech products is not "fictional" media, so for him the endorsement would often come from within the media he produces).
How much do you even know about music theory or dance choreography?
If I did something wrong with a flofof in public, and people comment and ask my about my wrong usage of a flofof for years, and I respond with "bitch, I don't know what a flofof is, and I don't want to know, looollll, keepin' it real bro!" then I'd be a right idiot – not for doing something wrong with a flofof, or not immediately knowing what a flofof is, but for not WANTING to know and making a show out of not knowing.
This is performative idiocy.
Heck, I just did a CI/CD proof of concept where the company was using Java Docker containers. I don’t know Java at all and haven’t done anything in Java in two decades (I’m a .Net, Python, JavaScript guy)
I used ChatGPT to help me create a simple Java Spring Boot app in a Docker container with JUnit tests. I freely admitted I don’t know Java and that I used ChatGPT to do Java parts. That’s not what I was brought in for just like she wasn’t brought in to do Excel.
ChatGPT propped me up just like her producers propped her up and brought her in to do a role
If the pilot on Delta had a heart attack and the flight attendant ask me to fly the plane, I would say “here’s the ‘sitch, I don’t know anything about flying a plane”
I have no idea why geeks are getting their panties all twisted because a famous singer doesn’t know Excel.
We care about that you and Kelly preach ignorance, which is proven to be damaging to you or for the society at large.
Btw, for your Delta example: you don’t need to be proud of your lack of knowledge to admit that you don’t know anything. In your example, there is no sign of proudness.
If she asked you to be one of her backup dancers would you expect people to tsk tsk on their high horse if you laughed and said “I can’t dance. I have no desire to learn how to dance and I have two left feet”?
What’s the difference?
and while you say that’s a crazy example and dismiss it like you do the others, I actually was a part time fitness instructor about a decade ago and I did learn some about choreography, staying on beat to music, creating choreography that changed with the 32 count phrase of music, how to mix my own 32 count music with what is now Adobe Audition, etc and I had plenty of geeks come to my classes bragging about their ignorance when it came to having rythym.
Is that the same in your eyes - being proud of their ignorance?
Totally irrelevant to the topic what I desire.
> What was she suppose to do go out and take an extension course on Microsoft Office?
No. She could just simply admit that she didn’t and doesn’t know what is Excel. She didn’t just do that. She was cocky about it.
> If she asked you to be one of her backup dancers would you expect people to tsk tsk on their high horse if you laughed and said “I can’t dance. I have no desire to learn how to dance and I have two left feet”?
Yeah, because this is cocky. You can say the same thing without being asshole.
> Is that the same in your eyes - being proud of their ignorance?
Yes, if they really bragged about it. You can convey the same information without bragging and being cocky.
It seems like you're getting some kind of racial McGurk effect here? Kelly Rowland does not talk anything like this in the linked video. Here is what she actually says:
"Here's the sitch. I don't know what that is. I don't know what Microsoft Excel is. I don't know. I don't have a clue. So when I saw all these memes, I was like 'I don't care'."
Apart from 'sitch' and 'like' (which are both very common usages in informal conversation) this is all fully standard American English. You're getting worked up about someone saying that (i) they don't know what Microsoft Excel is and (ii) that they don't care about some memes. The "performative idiocy" exists only in your imagination.
The irony is that you're doing your own version of performative idiocy in your attempt to (I guess?) imitate Black American English.
it's not the ignorance, it's the gleeful arrogance and gloating about being ignorant.
this kind of attitude is dangerous.
i'm a c programmer, lowercase is beautiful and saves some pinky effort
the celebration and glorification of ignorance and simultaneously the persecution of intellect is a common facet of nearly all fascist, authoritarian, and communist regimes.
my counter-culture capitalization is harmless, but i'm amused that it got your goat.
semi-intentional:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice
Comma splices are also occasionally used in fiction, poetry, and other forms of literature to convey a particular mood
or informal style. Some authors use commas to separate short clauses only.