I just heard a few days ago that Cole Sprouse deleted his account on Tumblr, and saw in several blog posts that he "betrayed" the Tumblr users. Of course, my curiosity got the best of me, and I began to Google the situation to see exactly what had happened. I found a link explaining a good deal of what had happened (click here for the webpage) and the webpage also linked me to his very last blog post.
The text shown above reads as:
So my goal for this
website was accomplished. I got all the information that I needed and now
I’m deleting this account. Thanks to all who watched, read, and listened,
I hope that in some small way my words carried weight. The next time you see or
hear from me I will, most definitely, be a changed man. Before I go I’ll answer
a question that people keep asking about my ring. My ring is the skull of
a chameleon. The chameleon can see
everything that happens around it. Constantly aware of its environment,
the small reptile changes color depending on the situation it enters. Its
very special form of adaptation is one I try to mimic, every time I enter a
space I try to become aware of what I step into and change my color accordingly. The way I move, feel, argue, and all the discourse of my life, changes in order
to succeed within that space. This adaptation to environmental and social
pressure will allow me to succeed, much like Darwin had so brilliantly noted. You
take a role and embrace it, but know that you are never whole, and those
who fall in love with you or otherwise fall for your performance, not you, for
you is never constant. My life is lokinous, but
there are many levels to deceit, and cheating is only frowned upon when you’re
caught. So goodbye and remember that the next time you see or hear from
me I will, most definitely, be a changed man.
Cole Sprouse also tweeted about his sociology project, which is provided in the link above. But the pictures of the tweets are too small to read, so I'll type them out for you here for the sake of your precious eye sight.
Well, the Tumblr results are
in! I suppose I've given this enough time to fester.
1) The goal was to see how a
group of people reacted to a suggestion of being observed. Some of you guessed
this, good job :)
2) I never actually stated you
guys were part of an experiment or project (go back and read the final post).
3) You guys forgot about
everything I said in my previous posts, jumped to conclusions, and changed your
disposition to me. Interesting.
4) Even if I did conduct a
report on this, which I'm not, you think I would do it without your permission?
ILU too much (not really)
5) You guys reacted exactly how
I thought you would, gathering nothing from what I said and acting like I
betrayed you. (SUCCESS and shame)
6) I don't know you, you don't
know me. People have the capability of being nice and mean. Don't blindly
follow someone.
7) I had fun :) I hope you did
too. We laughed, we even cried tears of a baby angel. So remember the good, not
the bad.
P.S. I will not be making another Tumblr. All people who say they're me are lying. Endless rage- Cole M.W. Sprouse
And then I realized I might actually be evil
After reading all of this, I came to the conclusion that Cole Sprouse is a pretty intelligent guy, and that he's studying something worthwhile. Now for some thoughts of my own.
I really don't see how these Tumblr users can feel betrayed by him. Like Cole said, they don't know him, and he doesn't know them. Did they really think that by him joining Tumblr, they could all gather around a virtual campfire and get to know each other intimately? It's the internet. You can follow anyone and they have the ability to be both kind and ruthless. Therefore, Cole was insanely kind while talking to these people who were sending countless messages to him through his ask box. His answers were answers that online bloggers were expecting to hear, and he portrayed kindness that was expected of him as a famous figure. And I think that people are upset over this whole thing because they're the ones who got involved with it and "fell for it." I was one of the Tumblr users who could care less if Cole Sprouse was on Tumblr or not, and even if I had followed him, I would have been smarter than to actually try to message him. I already knew that chances of communicating with him were slim to none, and he was just another celebrity finding ways to reach out to his fans.
Another thing I dislike about Tumblr is that most of the people who I follow on it complain about how ugly they are and how no one understands them and how they feel so alone. They talk about how no one loves them and that they'll be "forever alone," and they seem to love talking about how they hate everyone. People go on there for the sake of complaining about how horrible their lives are, and every single time I log on, I scroll past at least 50+ posts talking about the above. Then I sit there and shake my head, thinking, "That is no way to live life." So when Cole Sprouse joined the famous pessimistic blogging site, I thought, "These people are going to go crazy over this." It seemed so out of place for him to even be on a site like that. It is simply not a place where celebrities belong.
I find it funny how so many people thought Cole actually gave two shits about them and their lives and how deeply torn and scarred they were on the inside (as if), when no one on Tumblr gives a shit about anyone. It's the truth. People only "care" when someone posts a message saying, "I'm going to commit suicide now. Bye," or, "If I get this many reblogs, I won't kill myself." (a tactic often used to quickly gain more followers). Then people begin to reblog them saying things like, "Help this person! Save a life!" But they don't really care about that person committing suicide. They didn't care when that particular person was posting depressing posts (like every Tumblr user does), so why should that change? Looking at what Cole said, you never know who a person is or what their tendencies are. And people on Tumblr followed him and conversed with him thinking that he understood and that they knew him and that he would know them, Poor, depressed, deeply torn souls.
After reading about all of what happened, I found myself intrigued by Cole Sprouse as a person. The way he thought this through is fascinating to me, not to mention a rather fair experiment. I often thought about conducting a Tumblr experiment myself, where I would make a fake Tumblr account, accumulate a fair amount of followers through depressing posts, and then post a text post about how I was going to kill myself, just to see how many people fell for the "I care about you" card. But I found that to be a rather cruel experiment, considering how suicide is a touchy subject, so I gracefully backed away from the idea. But the whole chameleon concept is true, how we, as humans, adapt to our surroundings in order to survive and blend in with society. Think about it. We all have our private lives at home, but once out in society, we look and act a certain way to blend in, just as chameleons do. We don't want to stick out and show society how different we are because we're afraid we will be looked down upon, rejected, and end up completely alone. And Cole wanted to challenge this subject by means of joining an internet site. He also pointed out that "you is never constant," meaning that as people, we are always changing and adapting, so you can't fall in love with someone for who he or she is, because he or she is always changing as a person.
In conclusion, if you're a Tumblr user who feels betrayed by Cole Sprouse, don't hate him, because he isn't the one who persuaded you to become what you might feel as a "lab rat." Be angry at yourself a little bit for being none the wiser, and be upset with the way society has shaped you, along with natural animal instinct to blend in, adjust, and belong. Had you been a little wiser and a little more realistic about this whole situation (like me), you could have proved his expectations wrong and completely changed the results of this sociology project. But alas, what's done is done, and he's just a human being who as curious about the ways humans behave and respond to a given situation, such as a celebrity joining a networking site.
Maybe some of you will learn from this and be a little wiser next time you think you know someone based on their Tumblr page instead of who they really are and what they aren't telling you.
*Tumblr: A blogging website (usually used by teenagers) where you can reblog photos, conversations, links, text posts, videos, music media, and you can also post these things yourself. You follow certain blogs that you like, and the people who you follow will post things or reblog things that interest them, which will appear on your dashboard (the main blog screen) for you to see, like, and also reblog. The more people who follow you, the more "Tumblr famous" you become.
