So Nonhle Thema – from Vuzu reality show Nonhle Goes to Hollywood, and the former face of the Dark and Lovely brand – seems to be having a bit of a freak-out on Twitter. She’s eager to tell everybody that she is “young and RICH……….LOL…..DEAL WITH IT PLEASE…” Over and over again.
I mean, there’s a pretty wide sample of choice tweets to choose from. The sample below are some of my favourites, but there’s so much more on her twitter feed – take a look.
Now, Nonhle has told me to “Stop being mediocre aim for super greatness damn…” which, so far as I can tell, means she wants me to click on www.nonhlethema.tv, when it launches – this being some or other online video venture she’s involved in, that she’s trying to build up viewership for by attracting attention to her Twitter account.
Nohle, fortune cookie of wisdom that she is, tells us, “I GET PAYED JUST TO HAVE MY NAME ON GUEST LIST..LOL….BRAND NONHLE THEMA.” Which seems to be the whole problem: she’s treating herself as a brand. First off, brand-building requires the formation of a distinct, likeable identity; which isn’t what’s happening here. And, if it makes sense to be discussing yourself as a brand – I’m not sure it does – ‘branding’ as promotion of a distinct product through advertising and design is distinct from celebrity, which is what Nonhle has. Or had.
So Nohle’s doing it wrong. I mean, yes, she’s suddenly got a whole cess-pool of followers (just under 35,000 at time of writing) staring at her account and waiting for her to say some more stupid things, but that isn’t support; that’s attention. Social media, sadly, requires you to be sociable.
Nohle seems to be trying to take a leaf out of Charlie Sheen’s book in getting publicity by being a douche on the internet. And you know what Charlie Sheen got out of that whole coke-fueled tigerblood #winning spiel? About a week of internet notoriety. Then he got replaced by the next funny cat video, and Ashton Kutcher took his job.
There’s no hard-and-fast rule to success on the internet, but it helps not to be a dick. So I mean here’s hoping the various millions that Dark and Lovely provided Nonhle with hold up, because I don’t see her making much out of whatever this is.
[Source: NonhleThema]
[Image via Vuzu]
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