Totally oblivious to the power of the face, or: Doing my bit for Richard Armitage’s box office

I have my RL social media fairly strongly separated from my Richard Armitage social media. I allow a few crossovers, but I keep most of my Richard Armitage updates out of my RL FB — and if you read this blog via FB, you read Michaela Servetus and not me. Anyway, for whatever reason, I put my “like” of the Old Vic FB page in my RL FB, which meant that I saw the post about Armitage signing the posters in that feed — and then I liked it and shared it in that feed — so all my RL FB friends saw it. Which isn’t really a problem anymore, if it ever was. So Serv likes a play, or a handsome man. Neither of those things would surprise anyone in my RL feed.

Except, I forgot — probably about a quarter of my feed are people whom I know professionally. Again, not a problem. Except, my professional research area was early modern religious history. Oh, yeah. These are people who actually have a high interest in the subject matter.

It started with a friend who edited a professional journal that I used to write tons of book reviews for in the first decade of the century. He liked it, shared the photo, and said, in capital letters in his share, WHO IS THIS? He got something like five likes from his FB friends. Then he sent me a PM because we hadn’t chatted in a long time, and he wrote, I admit I probably wouldn’t have gotten in touch without having seen that photo. Is that a friend of yours?

Om, no. Just an actor whose career I follow.

Too bad, he wrote, I was thinking it is really time for you to get back into circulation.

LOL, I wrote, maybe, but I think he’s a little out my league. Like I would be dating an actor who’s appearing in a starring role at the Old Vic.

I was looking at the web page, he wrote, and I think a lot of our colleagues would be interested in this production. And you know a lot of people are in Europe over the summer using the libraries. Mind if I post it on our FB page?

No, I replied, go right ahead.

In my little world there are three or four big professional organizations and a lot of smaller interest groups. I just saw the post linked on the page of the third one. I can’t figure out whether this is happening because of interest in The Crucible or because Richard Armitage takes such a great picture, or both, but my colleagues are definitely getting an eyeful this weekend.

Oops.

So if you see a lot of sedately clothed middle-aged theatergoers in jeans and backpacks with notebooks in their hands staring at the stage attentively and whispering with American accents — well, you’ll know how those people got there.

~ by Servetus on June 15, 2014.