But really, folks, is it a good idea to claim Jacko as an ideal to which people in this community might aspire?
The man took something that was considered to be geeky and odd - dancing - practiced it feverishly and from a young age, and almost singlehandedly made his own brand of dance mainstream, sexy, and cool. To the end he worked hard at trying to keep himself at the peak of his abilities.
If he's a hacker, he was the ultimate hacker - despite being a bizarro geek in nearly every way up to and including the gradual draining of his skin pigmentation, he did what he loved, became famous for it, was the best at his line of work, and was a sex icon for two decades. If that's not hacking I don't know what is.
You have to admit that Michael Jackson was just plain weird. But then many of the greatest innovators were also considered weird in their time.
I don't think that anyone would want to emulate every aspect of his strange lifestyle, but he definitely came up with a few ideas that were worthy of a hacker. He found new ways to entertain people, and whatever strange personal identity crises he may have had he still hacked together an identity that most people are at least slightly familiar with.
To my way of thinking, that is relatively successful, even if he did end up dying young.
I think if there is anything worth emulating it would be persistence.
You have to admit that Michael Jackson was just plain weird. But then many of the greatest innovators were also considered weird in their time.
I think that in particular is what I'd want to emulate: He was weird because he did a lot of stuff that he liked that nobody else really understood. I don't know if it was courage on his part or if he just didn't care, but I hope that I'm one day able to do the same.
But was he really doing what he loved, or was he partially an automaton doing what his parents engineered him to do, eventually becoming the only things he knew how to do? It seems like he almost had no choice in the matter, and all his eccentricities were his way of coping with destiny.
I don't know enough about Michael Jackson to be able to respond well to this, but he made his career out of it, invented his own moved, and genuinely seemed to love what he did. That's not enough to say it was of his own accord, but I'd like to think it was.
The man took something that was considered to be geeky and odd - dancing - practiced it feverishly and from a young age, and almost singlehandedly made his own brand of dance mainstream, sexy, and cool. To the end he worked hard at trying to keep himself at the peak of his abilities.
If he's a hacker, he was the ultimate hacker - despite being a bizarro geek in nearly every way up to and including the gradual draining of his skin pigmentation, he did what he loved, became famous for it, was the best at his line of work, and was a sex icon for two decades. If that's not hacking I don't know what is.