Facing the Voice: Thoughts on Meeting Bill Nye

On Wednesday night I met Bill Nye the Science Guy!

Now you’d think that meeting a childhood idol and hugely popular science educator would leave me like this

But it actually left me more like this

Meeting celebrities in-person can be a dangerous game. Obviously it’s super cool to talk with the people who fascinate you, but you also run a big risk: knowing what they’re really like. 

Yes, we’d all like to think there’s no way this person whom we’ve grown up watching could be anything other than their awesome, on-screen persona. But notice that term, persona. A persona is a role played by an actor, and I used that word for a specific reason. In real life, celebrities might be nothing like their persona. 

This can’t be news to anyone—we’ve all heard stories about this. Even so, it didn't cross my mind when I got tickets (and backstage passes!) to see Bill Nye at Penn State.

The lecture was great and showed me every reason to love this guy: he’s funny, intelligent, fascinating, and an excellent communicator. But backstage was a slightly different story. 

It started off with a procession line leading everyone to Bill for a picture. This came off as celebrity worship and seemed a little strange, but I figured we’d see the more human side of him after it ended so I didn’t mind. 

Instead of a phone, I went up to him with my camera to ask if he’d say something for Conjecture (“brother, I’ll see you on weekday”). As I was describing it, he cut me off and said “you can’t do this, what if everyone wanted to record a video? Just take a picture” I apologized and took out my phone, but he told me I wasn’t ready and sent me behind someone in line. 

Of course I shouldn’t judge him too much from my one interaction…but he was like this with everyone, coldly telling people to hurry up with their pictures and get out of line as soon as they were done. Attempts at polite small talk were essentially met with “come on, you can’t do this now.” 

I'd already had a sour taste in my mouth from observing all this, but he did say that there’d be time for more talking and stuff after the picture line. So I waited to see the real Bill Nye.

Unfortunately, nothing really changed. After the pictures everyone did gather around him to interact in a more intimate way, but it instead devolved into a semi-formal Q&A. Genuine exchanges were infrequent and it ultimately still felt like celebrity worship. I expected to be the audience during the lecture, not while I was backstage too.

Now look, I get that everyone wanted a picture and that Bill's probably exhausted from talking to so many colleges and that he's kind of a big deal…but let’s compare this to another experience I’ve had.

At VidCon 2015 I met Vsauce’s Michael Stevens.

He was a fantastically nice dude. He was flooded with more people than Bill was and still took the time to hold genuine conversations with each individual that approached him. He only left because he was forced to, not because he wanted to. Needless to say, I was floored. In fact when I pulled this photo from my facebook, I saw a comment I wrote on July 25, 2015.

My facebook's in Italian :)

So yeah—we can make excuses for Bill Nye, but when I’m comparing his behavior to Michael Steven’s (who in many ways is more popular than Bill Nye), it just doesn't hold. 

All of this, meeting an idol and realizing they’re not as cool in person, makes me think of something I heard recently from CGP Grey on his podcast Hello Internet (skip to around 1:20:00). He was saying how seeing the faces of narrating voices like his own can actually ruin the experience for the audience. You wind up liking the narration in a such a unique way that seeing the real thing just doesn’t fit. And after seeing the real thing, the narration can no longer exist in your mind as a solely awesome creation, but rather the product of an ordinary person—it becomes less magical because you know the truth. If you don’t understand what I mean, maybe seeing real pictures of CGP Grey would help illustrate this (see footnote).

Meeting Bill Nye was like seeing that voice. Meeting any celebrity runs that risk. They might be just as you’d expect them, but they also might be something else. 

That night I traded the Bill Nye that existed in my head for this picture:

I want to trade it back.

~~~Footnotes~~~

RE: CGP Pictures...

CGP is okay with their dissemination, he mentioned that in the same Hello Internet Podcast after the section I wrote about. But remember what you just read! Think if you actually want to see what he looks like.

...

https://twitter.com/Alextigtig/status/533483252255031297
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5MVXdg6nho
https://www.quora.com/What-does-CGP-Grey-look-like

Nice Guys and Relationships

So a while back someone I knew was very drunk and complaining to me. Of course, it was about a girl.

He liked this girl, she didn’t like him back…that was really it. BUT, he was going on and on and on about how he was so nice to her and she STILL didn't like him, that she doesn’t know what’s good for herself and maybe he just shouldn’t be nice at all anymore.

Now he was intoxicated, but I still couldn’t believe the words I was hearing. This is that "nice guys finish last" thing you hear in high school!

So I'm writing this post as a sort of response to that idea, and hopefully it can help anyone else, guy or gal, who is struggling with a similar situation.

~~Let's roll~~


Ok so first off, he’s thinking that basically because he’s so nice to her, she should fall for him. This seems to kind of make sense, until you consider some things:

1. If niceness is all that makes someone attracted to someone else, then what's to stop someone from being nicer to this girl than you were? Based on your logic, this person would leave you instantly! But this doesn't happen, and that's because of the next thing...
2. What attracts us to people is complicated, and not one-dimensional (i.e. it'll never be niceness alone). I mean, you could meet the nicest person in the world and not be attracted to them for many reasons! This is because we're also attracted to elements like ambition, personality, physical attractiveness, and sense of humour. Attraction is a complex combination of so many things that one alone would never sway a person (or, at least, it shouldn't). 
3. Finally, you said “oh maybe I shouldn’t be nice in general anymore.” Okay, I’m assuming you meant you'd stop being nice just to people you're romantically interested in and not the general population, because the latter would be pretty stupid. So now that we have that established, here's the thing about this: yeah, niceness isn't the sole determinant for relationships, but girls like people who are nice!! Why would a girl, or anyone want to be with someone who’s mean?? I realize I’m not a girl here, but you gotta just trust me on this one. If a girl you like is attracted to someone who (in your view) isn't as nice as you are, it just means she sees another meaningful and attractive quality in him or her besides niceness.

So after I explained this to him, he proceeded to analogize his affection for this person: "What if you find the prettiest, most beautiful flower in the field, and you know it's the one for you and that there are no other flowers like her, but you can't have it. What then?"

There are a lot of reasons this analogy isn’t great.

1. The idea that this is the most beautiful flower you’ll ever see becomes true when you decide you’re not going to explore the field anymore! If you just stand there admiring it, of course you’ll never find anything better! There’s a whole field of other beautiful flowers to find!
2. But for argument’s sake, let’s say that this is indeed the most beautiful flower in the field, okay? Well to this I'll tell you that our personal standards of attraction change as we mature physically and emotionally. We will be attracted to different things at different points in our life, so even if that flower is (improbably) the most beautiful in the field, as you mature it probably won’t stay that way! And look, I know it’s really hard to get your mind around this and the last point when you're really into someone. I've been there. But I promise you that it always gets better with time. 

BUT OKAY let’s say it really is the most beautiful flower and you’re never going to change the way you feel (unlikely). There's still one huge problem with this analogy: women aren't flowers! You see, flowers are passive objects—they get admired and picked. But women (and people) are not!!! Except in extreme circumstances, people get their say in deciding who're they're attracted to. That’s just how relationships work.

Instead of looking at a relationship like admiring a flower, I think a better analogy is those hotel doors that connect rooms. If you’re attracted to someone, you can open your door and show it. But nothing will happen unless they open their door too, and just like in an actual hotel, they have the right not to open it.

Now when I was explaining all of this to him…well, most of it wasn’t getting through because he was really drunk. But I was also getting really angry that I even had to explain this stuff to him! But as I thought about it more, I realized something: he had never had any of this explained to him. Maybe it seems basic to you or me, but without hearing this concretely it can be a confusing and difficult concept to grasp. 

And when you view someone's actions through this lens, it becomes really difficult to stay angry with them. You just want to tell them "hey man, this is how the world works, and you’ll be happier and healthier when it sinks in." Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this in the moment and was getting incredibly frustrated with him…but yeah. Hopefully this helps some of you deal with this type of stuff. It would have been helpful to me too when I was younger.

Why I have this blog

Hey there. So most of you who read this probably know I have a YouTube channel, Conjecture. There I've uploaded informational videos and vlogs. [The word "vlog" tends to have a simple or vapid connotation, though mine are more informational like the vlogbrothers' videos.]

Though I like my vlogging, I've decided that I want to direct less attention towards them on Conjecture. There are two main reasons for this:

1. I think the informational videos are usually more fun to research and more rewarding than the vlogs, but more importantly...
2. Because I generate vlog ideas faster than informational ones, they can take over my channel. 

Yeah, the vlogs would begin to outpace my informational videos. I would have 5 vlog ideas I'm thinking and writing about but all of my informational videos would be on hold.

So because I still like a lot of the ideas but want to do more informational videos, I'm posting all of my vlog ideas here—the only real difference is now they don't have video accompaniment. The really important or personally meaningful vlog ideas will still make their way to YouTube, but I'm expecting to post a lot fewer on YT.

I also realized this site can store all the other creative, non-YT things I do (like podcasts and typewriter musings). It's all an experiment, so let me know what you think!