Except… you know… I don’t actually think I am.
Let me explain.
Your reputation precedes you
When you’re me (and you’re not, but you might as well read this anyway), a lot of what differentiates you — what makes you in some way “remarkable” in a sea of competitors — is your personality.
Some of the things I do in my business can be done by a whole lot of other people. When I first started, pretty much all I did were WordPress blog setups and WordPress websites. While those things are just part of my repertoire today, they used to dominate my business. If I couldn’t have sold those two services, I’d have flunked out of this game at the starting gate.
But the thing about my WordPress site-building is that a few other people do the same thing. And in your business — especially if you’re just starting out — that’s probably true, too. Sure you may do good design or write good copy, but “being excellent” is not a unique selling proposition. Everyone claims to be good, and plenty of people are good. But even amongst the excellent, you’re still just one in thousands.
This game — the game of “blog and then get paid” — is about who you know… or more specifically, it’s about who knows you. It’s about who likes you enough to do business with you. You need to make friends. You need a small amount of internet fame. You need, in a limited way and in a limited capacity, to become bigger than life.
If you do this right, then suddenly, you’re not just a guy or gal who builds WordPress sites. You’re a guy or gal a lot of people know and like who builds WordPress sites. Which, around about the time some of those people or their friends need WordPress sites, is when you start getting paid.
Your reputation does the heavy lifting for you. Your reputation and your image and your personal brand are out there every day, on your blog and on the blogs of others, on social media and in the minds and on the lips of your internet friends, paving the way for you.
But there’s a tradeoff. There’s a catch.
The internet doesn’t care about your complex humanity
I saw this tweet not long ago from @EndGrind on Twitter:
.
.
That got me thinking, because I’d gotten similar feedback before. There’s something about the way I come off that gives an impression of arrogance, and every once in a while, someone will crack through that perceived arrogance and decide I’m actually an okay guy.
And you know what? Maybe I am arrogant. I’ll allow for the possibility, but it doesn’t feel very dominant to me.
If you met me in person, I think you’d find that I’m pretty considerate. I’d hold a door open for you. I’d listen when you spoke and not talk over you. I wouldn’t spend the whole time we were chatting telling you about how well my business is doing and how much money I made last month. (And in fact, at conferences, it’s hard to get me to discuss business or products or money at all. I’d rather bullshit about random stuff, or listen to your story.) I don’t even like networking in the traditional sense, and tend to eschew it favor of low-key get-togethers.
My mother taught me well. Really. I know my manners.
So yeah, I’m polite. But like anyone, I have other sides to me. One of those sides is snarky, sarcastic, and even caustic. I like borderline jokes and obscure pop culture references. I’m also confident, I can be stubborn, and I don’t back down when something gets in my way.
“Online Johnny” tends to be that stuff — the snarky, confident, sarcastic stuff — without much of the mitigating politeness. It has to be that way. There’s not enough “room” online for every little thing I ever do, so you only see the parts that come forward most readily — and my polite side doesn’t write very compelling blog posts.
This is true for everyone you think you know online, and it’s true for every famous person you know about. In a limited medium, we all come across with one primary attribute. One primary interest. One primary dimension.
But every single person out there is more than that.
Do you think Darren Rowse thinks about photography or effective blogging 24 hours a day? Do you think Sonia Simone thinks only about copy and ethical business? Do you think that Clay Collins (whose tagline seems to be “I fucking love marketing!”) is preoccupied with marketing tips and tricks and strategies every waking moment of his life?
I know Clay pretty well at this point, and marketing does not dominate his every thought. I’ve talked family, culture, spirituality, books, movies, and dozens of other things with Clay. We skipped networking at Blogworld in Vegas to go ride a roller coaster. We hardly ever talk about marketing.
And by the way, people think Clay is arrogant, too.
The nature of the web is that you only have so much time and so much mental bandwidth. You only have so much of people’s attention, so you can’t treat the world to a 360-degree character sketch showcasing all of your complex, multidimensional human depth.
So you show the most dominant parts of yourself, and you talk about what you know best, what seems the most likely to be effective.
I could write rambling, indecisive blog posts about the meaning of my relationship with my wife, and maybe you’d think they were sweet and polite. You’d also think they were not at all worth your time to read, because they’d be unengaging and irrelevant to you.
So instead, because I only get so much time on the stage, I talk about having balls and growing confidence and doing what is necessary to make your business work — and hopefully not just your business, but your life.
What’s more, I write those posts as if you should care because I want you to care — and you’ve got to be a little arrogant if you feel that what you write are things that the whole world should care about.
So I get it.
My so-called one-dimensional life
I come off arrogant. Clay Collins comes off arrogant. Sonia Simone, who talks a lot about fostering community and connection, comes off as a hippie.
Everyone who writes a blog (or anyone who is at all in the public eye) has many dimensions to them, and you’ll see a bunch of those dimensions if you pay attention for long enough.
So you, dear reader, probably don’t actually think I’m arrogant because you’ve seen the other sides of me here and there. But to the more casual observer, only the one side is really visible.
It’s the nature of the human mind to want to simplify and categorize things — to put a label on everything it sees so that it can file it away. Your brain likes things that are good or bad. Tall or short. Fun or not fun. Arrogant or polite. Not both.
When you run across something complex, it’s harder to process. You can’t put X in a box with a label on it because it’s somehow good AND bad, and so it has to sit in its own category, taking up precious brain space.
And so the brain says, “War is bad. Charity is good. Justice is right. Prejudice is wrong.”
Your brain says, “Sonia is a hippie. Johnny is arrogant.”
And unless it has a really good reason to think twice and three times about those statements, it’s easiest to just let them be. The brain is an organ of inertia. It has a lot of input to process, so the more it can get out of the way and into a box, the better.
Why this matters
Another side of me that you may have run across is that I don’t claim to have all of the answers, and it’s about to make another appearance.
I know that this stuff — this fact that you’ll be labeled with your most dominant attribute, usually to the exclusion of your other attributes — matters, because it affects the way people come to you, what preconceived notions they have, and how willing they are to see another side of you. But I don’t know what to do about it, how to do something about it… or even if anything should be done about it.
But I know it matters.
Two weeks ago, I did a really popular call with Jon Morrow about how to use edginess and snarkiness in your business, and a week later saw this comment on one of my posts on Copyblogger:
Actually, Johnny, when I first viewed the image of you biting an apple, I read the text that followed, and imagined a fast-talking Yankee who’d sell me the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, if I’d let him.
Imagine my surprise when I first listened to you on a webinar: softly-spoken, civilised, attentive.
That’s life; full of surprises.
– Gordon Rowland
And I thought, “Wow. That was close.” Because Gordon now seems to like me… but he almost didn’t.
He might be someone I could really connect with, but he was put off by that first impression. He was put off by the category I fall into by default of “snarky and arrogant” — a category that usually attracts my right people but seems to push away some of the “90% right people” (call them “90 percenters”) who might be a good fit but don’t stick around long enough to see through that default label.
This is a little disconcerting.
Gordon spoke up, but most of the people who never see past that first impression don’t speak up. I’ll never know how many 90 percenters run off and never come back.
And here’s where I shrug and admit I don’t know the solution. If there is a solution.
I guess the moral is to just be aware. Just know that whatever you project can never, ever be all of you.
If you project quirky, you’ll be stereotyped as quirky no matter how sensible you can be at times.
If you project sweet, you’ll be seen as sweet (and probably also naive) even if you have solid and decisive business sense.
If you project solid and professional, people will never appreciate your vast stores of pop culture references and wry jokes. Just ask Brian Clark. (Watch Brian at home on Copyblogger and then on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean — especially if you catch him during a follower purge on Twitter.)
No matter what, you’re going to lose some folks. I’m going to lose some hesitant 90 percenters who never get past my arrogant image, and Brian is going to lose some fun-loving 90 percenters who never get past his serious image.
So you watch. You try to remain true to yourself as a whole person instead of just a one-dimensional character, aware that you can’t always control how others label you.
And you do the best you can.
Hey Johnny,
I am a member of Jon Morrow’s Guest Blogging course. Yesterday I read a post in the forums that discussed this very concept.
It talked about archetypes, and she labeled you as “The Jester” with a touch of the “Everyman” archetype. She labeled Jon as “The Hero” and “The Magician” who tells us how it is and pulls back the magic curtain to show us how the trick works. She labeled Sonia as “The Innocent” with a touch of the “Sage” archetype.
Interesting stuff. I couldn’t agree more that you must choose and , for the most part, stick to your guns on the “branding” or “archetype” or whatever you want to call it. I wrote a post a few months ago called “How To Get Your Very Own Cubby Hole In My Brain” that talks about the same thing. We want to stick you in a cubby hole with a clear label on it and if you stay true to that label, you can stay in that cubby hole. If you deviate, well, we don’t know what the hell to do with you.
Wow, that is really neat about the archetypes.
That’s really cool stuff; thanks for sharing it! I’ll take my archetypes, but I like Jon’s better. “Hero Magician” sounds second only to “Rock Star Grenade Launcher.”
I know a guy who brands himself as the Rockstar. I can see how adding grenade launching to his presentations would really take things to the next level.
The whole web is built on trust..once you get this from someone then you can sell then anything..people buy from who they trust..period
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
Becoming known for something… that sounds suspiciously like branding or marketing to me. Which only arrogant people need to cover up their shame.
People who lack confidence in themselves and who easily become envious of others tend to see confidence as arrogance, because they’re just projecting.
What?!?! Someone associated my name with the word “marketing”? How the fuck did that happen?
Michael, the first para in your comment made me laugh out loud.
–Clay
Loved this, Johnny. Perception management is crazy that way – either people have a one-dimensional view of you or they just don’t know what to say. I tend to get the latter, I think; I’ve found it interesting that people tend to describe me with enigmatic descriptions. Or just talk about my Southern accent and grits.
On the flip side, there have been people who’ve asked me about you because our brands seem to be so different, yet we hang out all over the place. I’ve pretty much told them that the Johnny they’ve seen isn’t the real Johnny, which is actually quite ironic given that its a pen name. The Johnny they see is the real Johnny, but it’s not the real human.
Well, this is a semantic thing too. There’s also the argument that what you see online is “more truly me than me,” because I’m uninhibited. But it’s also an incomplete, unrounded picture… just a slice of the whole.
When people talk about being authentic, what they mean is you drop the internal filters on what you’re willing to say. Having a clear persona is more about deciding which internal filters to drop.
Where a normal person would think, “I can’t say that, it would make me sound like an asshole,” JBT lets it fly. (Did I just call you an asshole and not-normal in the same sentence?)
When I’m writing, I sometimes think, “That doesn’t sound like me.” What I really mean is that it doesn’t sound like the me that I want to be.
Dude, your new URL made me laugh out loud.
Yeah, that’s my new project. Would you be willing to talk to me about low-carb and diabetes?
My dad (type 2 for 20+ years) has agreed to try it since the stuff he’s been getting from the VA hasn’t done a damn bit of good. I’m pretty confident in how “normal” people should eat, but I don’t know the medical gotchas for diabetics.
In a heartbeat. Just drop me a line; happy to talk about it whenever!
I understand bass-ackwards. I used to think I was humble…but I was just a self-depreciating prick.
Pride is double-edged. True confidence is knowledge of your name, your game, and a deeper reverence for the meaningful things in life (like screaming on roller coasters with guys named Clay).
Cheers,
M
Weird. Don’t be self-deprecating and be a prick, man… go ahead and be a true asshole if you’re going to be a prick, or be a Jewish comedian if you want to do the self-deprecating thing.
Hey, Johnny –
I appreciate this post. As my business and my brand platform grows, I’ve been excessively conscious lately of the ‘image’ of self I’m cultivating online and how that ultimately impacts my relationships with peers, readers, and clients. And, also, yes, with myself first and foremost. I’m fighting against presenting myself one-dimensionally in my biz, but, as Russ Henneberry references in the comments above, I’m also a student of archetypes and know the importance of consistency in one’s conversation with one’s audience. Thanks for opening this up for discussion.
Everyone knows these archetypes except me, huh?
Check out what @SinclairAshley’s doing in #ActionStudio. Good stuff about archetypes in there.
This is such an important part of branding small / solo entrepreneurial businesses, and yet so overlooked.
We often (well, I often) assume that everyone knows what we’re thinking or will “get” things in the way that we intend them. After all, I know my message, right? And I’m a good writer, so I can get the point across.
And the fact is, I don’t know how I have landed on someone else – unless I ask them.
Jon Morrow said something similar… he doesn’t usually trust himself with humor because HE knows what he means, but it comes across to others as dicky. I still say that’s a win, though.
Love this post Johnny. I get the arrogant thing all the time, and I don’t get it either. What is it about confidence that is mis-perceived as arrogance?
When someone actually says it to me, I get all worried about what people think of me and try to be more like-able. But I’m not being me, and that sucks.
The fact is there are arrogant people out there, but they are asses who wouldn’t care if someone called them arrogant or not.
I wouldn’t call you or Clay arrogant – just clever guys who have their sh*t together… and they know it.
I think it’s like when a confident woman is called a bitch. It’s a way of cutting people down, because that’s one way to feel better if you’re not confident yourself.
I get called arrogant too. But mostly I get called “different” or “weird”. When I was young, it used to make me self conscious (and sometimes it would make me cry). I tried very hard to be “normal” back in the day.
Now, I no longer give a fig about trying to please or be something that I am not. And that wins me fans (and a few enemies) along the way. C’est la vie.
I love the freedom that comes when you realize you don’t care if someone notices you’re wearing tacky socks and stuff like that. I’m looking so forward to embarrassing my kids.
Actually I think I come across as an arrogant hippie.
You? Arrogant? You’re the nicest person I know. Clark on the other hand…
Okay, this is funny. When your reply came by email, it just shows up as a normal comment, with no indication that you had replied to Sonia. So I’m like, “Awesome! Derek thinks I’m the nicest person he knows!”
And then I saw this. What happened to you, dude? You’ve changed. We used to be cool.
I also sometimes get the label of snob, because although I am warm & outgoing with people I know, I’m also quite shy with people I don’t know. I’m working on it and getting a little better, but I also have to retreat somewhere after interacting with a lot of new people.
I get the same thing. Partly because people read shyness and standoffish, but also when I mention someone else as an example (just like in the article above) you will inevitably use people others have heard of an will miss folks out, which can seem cliquey and elitist.
We attract who we attract and to do that we have to put others off. Such is life.
Okay, that’s pretty messed up that people see you two as snobbish.
But I know what you mean, Chris… I’ve said “big names” before so that more than a few people will know who I’m talking about and understand my point… and have gotten jabs for being cliquey.
Now we all know what the A in A-list stands for.
Oh that’s funny.
I LOL’d.
Ooh I’m so glad you wrote this post Johnny! I have to say I was really surprised by your personality when we met in real life. For most people I expect it to be similar to their online persona, but for some the persona only gives us a sliver of the whole.
I think it’s true that we just tend to generalize so we can keep track of the thousands of people we “meet” online. I think that’s why you’re awesome in audio, since your voice, your humor, and full personality really comes through.
Haha, you’re not the first person to tell me that, about being surprised!
I tend to get called “a nice guy” and nice people like me, but in reality, I AM arrogant.
I want to show more of my snarky and sarcastic side, but years of living on corporate cube farms have left me afraid of making people mad. I’ve developed my politically correct side too much.
You’ve encouraged me to get over that, you arrogant prick.
Thanks.
Haha, I thought of you and your arrogance after you tweeted this but before you commented. You’ve so beat me to the joke of calling you out.
WTF kind of world have I stumbled into where it’s ok to anoint one’s self as an arrogant prick and then in the same breath, with twinkling eyelashes, claim that “I’m really a nice guy with a tender soul”? I’ll tell you what kind of world that is, it’s a place debased where swine and other degenerates run around with freedom of voice and freedom of thought. My kind of place.
Enjoy your spot, Johnny B. Arrogant
Ha!
Johnny, about those potential customers you may have put off -
I believe that when you lose people out there on the fringes of your extreme you, then you can relax because you know everybody left in the room gets you. You never have to worry about going too far again because you have already defined your limits with the group that remains.
Agreed. The only thing that bugs me is that some of those that leave might not be a bad fit; they might be a great fit but have gotten an off-putting first impression. But you can’t win ‘em all.
Interesting. I first encountered you on Ittybiz, and I remember your first few posts kind of rubbed me the wrong way for some reason, but now I can’t even remember why. Eventually you said something that just clicked, and I realized you were cool.
I’m definitely snarky and sarcastic, and a lot of that comes through in my writing. I wonder if some people don’t get it though. I mean, I’m sure some people don’t get it, but I wonder who does and who doesn’t. I don’t know how people perceive me. I can’t be objective.
Haha, Naomi told me that people were split, that a lot liked me and a lot hated me. She’d then give me the barometer on the hate each time we talked, like, “Okay, they’re starting to hate you more, try giving away free info or something.”
Johnny,
Thanks for the shout out! I never knew insulting someone would actually help me one day.
I’ve definitely learned a lot from people like you and Ashley from The Middle Finger Project who say “If you don’t like me, too fucking bad”.
You don’t compromise your style to appease the masses. You lead with your attitude and confidence. I love it!
Thanks man! I’m glad I eventually came across as more multi-dimensional.
This struck a chord with me a little because today, once again, I made the observation that my home-schooling website is far and away one of the best out there.
Yet I know there are other sites getting more hits, maybe way more hits, that don’t contribute nearly as much to the home-schooling community as I do.
Most “home-schooling” sites are moms who are posting cute pictures of their kids and utilizing “memes” (something that I only partly even understand) to post on specific little niche topics on this day of the week and something else on another day of the week, etc.
My site gets into the meat of home-schooling. I am teaching people how to do it. I actually have people from all over the world who read my blog and I’ve had people from all over the world e-mail me and ask for personal advice with their own home-school challenges. And I help them as best I can. To the point where a couple of months ago I got on the phone with someone in Tennessee to help a woman in Germany who is moving to TN and wanted to connect with home-schoolers there.
I could get frustrated that the home-school universe hasn’t recognized me yet for the mighty force that I am.
But I choose not to. I got into this website/blogging/helping people thing for the long haul. And like you I can be stubborn. But let’s call it “determination” shall we?
Yep, I see where you’re coming from. Sometimes this stuff is slow to find your “true people,” but I vote that it’s totally worth it.
“bigger than life” = “slice of life” WHERE slice = “very thin”
This is the only blog post I’ve had time to read today and I am really glad I did. I’ve only wrote a couple of posts on my blog so far. I’m still kinda experimenting. But so far as honest as I’ve tried to be I feel like I am tip toeing around trying not to put anybody off.
I am not blogging for bucks though. Not yet anyway. So I really don’t have an excuse to be polite.
But, people i know (family, friends, customers) read my blog. What do the people you know think about your online personality? How do they react? Do you care?
I think that IS what’s holding me back a little.
Only a handful of people really know, and the problem you’re running into is EXACTLY why I write under a pseudonym. Here’s that story if you haven’t seen it:
http://www.copyblogger.com/johnny-b-truant/
Hey Johnny! Love this post! Thank you! I always loved the green apple and ‘the attitude’and after working with you – .your incredible professionalism and courtesy! (thank you!)
In a world of seemingly short attention spans and insecurity – perhaps we are more quick than ever to judge and stereotype. A shame – as frequently – we miss the most interesting layers to people.
It’s also a shame that being confident and good at what you do is perceived by some as arrogant – I agree with Michael – it’s projection.
Happy Easter JT! Thanks again for a great post … And being you!
Love from Downunder!
I think it’s just a necessity of the way the net works… just something to know to work around!
Thanks, Anne!
It’s funny,
I was just toying around with two different color schemes for a website redesign and brought it to the communities that I’m involved in and the split was 50/50
The funny part about the split is that the side that voted for a more earthtone friendly color knew me personally, or heard me speak. The side that voted the more slate color scheme only knew me from my online persona.
The reason why this was funny was because I’ve tried so hard to build a persona in one direction, yet the side that shines through more in the end is the more natural “mentoring” type side, which tends to dominate when I do one on one’s with people.
Lots of people miss that, and I love how you’ve broken it down here. It’s about what gets people in the door. This post, is obviously shows a well rounded side to your character Johnny, but the people here were attracted to you because of the thing you exude the most.
People gravitate towards what they need. And sometimes what they need is for you to be exactly who you are.
That’s awesome man, and I think it says it all. I’d probably have recommended red and black since that’s the part of your brand that I know.
Word.
Two thoughts.
First, Johnny, you say you don’t know what to do about being seen as one dimensional. I mean, I agree, people can only really process a few people with complexity, so fame rests on being one-dimensional. Lucille Ball was an excellent dramatic actress and a shrewd business woman, but she didn’t click into being a famous star until she got herself typecast as a physical comedienne.
So I say the thing to do is turn it to your advantage. You want to pick the one-dimensional stereotypical/archetypal image that will most appeal to and attract whatever and whoever it is you want to attract. If you are an investment advisor and you want people to trust you with their retirement savings, you can see that certain stereotypes will do best. If you are a brand messaging consultant, then perhaps you’ll want to highlight something else.
We all have many dimensions, but it is not being untrue to yourself to focus on only one of them in your public image. Then you can color inside those lines with some other elements of your personality to make you distinctive.
Second, being perceived as being arrogant is mostly about presenting a point of view or opinion as if it were an indisputable fact. No one calls you arrogant for saying “blue is a color”. Really, you’re not seen as arrogant for saying “I love chocolate ice cream.” You start to slide toward arrogance when you say “chocolate ice cream is the only real ice cream flavor.”
The thing is, problems are problems and questions are interesting because they don’t have “right” answers and reasonable people can disagree. But when you blog on the internet, and even more so when people come to you for advice, you don’t want to spend a lot of time arguing the side you disagree with or saying “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Someone says “I’ve decided to make some ice cream, but can’t decide what flavor. What flavor ice cream should I make?” You answer “Chocolate!” and poof: you’re arrogant. Even if that is, in fact, the best advice, it doesn’t make you less arrogant (sounding).
The more you explain your reasoning and back it up with facts, the less arrogant you appear. The more you acknowledge the value of other possible choices, the less arrogant you appear. The more open you are to being persuaded you are wrong, the less arrogant you appear.
Personally, I don’t respect or want to work with arrogant people. If you don’t want to be perceived as arrogant, then you need to find the way you’re most comfortable making people who disagree with you feel like you respect their point of view. Or at least respect how it is they could believe what you consider wrong, because they lack information or experience that you have, so long as you are open to the possibility that the reverse is true and you’re the one missing the relevant facts and information.
On the other hand, there are people who don’t respect people who aren’t arrogant. They consider them weak willed, insecure, untrustworthy losers. So, you know, do what feels right for you.
Very good point, and agreed. Ultimately, it comes down to accepting that you can’t impress everyone, and there are plus sides both to typecasting and niching and also to trying to appear more well-rounded. And ultimately, giving people something to hang their hat on — even if it doesn’t tell the whole story — is a better hook across the board.
Johnny:
Thank You.
This is one of your best posts, and I have been a fan for the longest time.
Do you come across as arrogant? No. Cocky–yeah, certainly. However, I find nothing wrong with that–reveals your personality. I want my bloggers to show a little skin.
Catch my drift?
Why should every blogger be just like every other blogger? That’s a recipe for disaster. You can’t be a people-pleaser and be all things to all people all the time.
That’s just crazy and it is also impossible. Just be yourself and you will shine out.
To thine own self be true/And it shall be/As night follows the day/that happiness will be a shadow/That never leaves you, to paraphrase William Shakespeare, that great British man of letters. I have not held your cockiness against you. That’s great about you. Your sense of humour is your USP. Your comedic timing makes me laugh and it keeps me coming back for more–and on different blogs. Way to go, buddy.
Sonia Simone is not a hippie. Nor a snob. Nor arrogant. Nor anything else. Forget about the labels, she is just a darn good writer. I enjoy reading her stuff for sure.
Same is the case with Michael Martine, Charlie Gilkey, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark (he reminds me of Woody Allen, one of my favorite writers and comedians), Ali Luke, and so many other bloggers I enjoy reading. I am a patron of good writing.
I do not really have labels for any of these bloggers. I just think they are creative people and they do good work. I appreciate their contributions, but that’s just me.
You can’t really change who you are to toe the line of the masses. You have to put your best foot forward and hope for the best, that things will work out. If people don’t find that acceptable, they can gravitate towards blogs that are in alignment with their preconceived notions.
Tough luck.
That’s the magic of writing: it caters to different sensibilities, different tastes and preferences, different mindsets.
I am sure a lot of people out there would be unpleasantly surprised if I revealed the fact that I love to read the poetry of Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott, Pablo Neruda, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, and a few, select others.
Having said that, I run the risk of being labelled as a snob and an elitist, but what do you expect me to do about it? I can’t change who I am to cater to your whims and fancies. And for every critic I meet on life’s highway, chances are I will meet a kindred spirit as well. So, there. Have a good one and keep your chin up. I am rooting for you.
Cheers.