Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Back from purgatoryJoão denies everything.
The O Globo columnist Ancelmo Góis appears to have closed the book on João Gilberto’s fake Facebook profile today.
In his blog, Góis wrote:
João on Facebook
João Gilberto hasn’t seen the Facebook page that bears his name and also hasn’t read the coverage about it. “I neither saw nor read,” he said yesterday, “and it’s not to belittle the boys who are running it. It’s that I have no interest in sending messages, gossiping, chatting, and offending people.”
More...
Friends told him that in Facebook he appears like an ill-humored fellow. The singer reacted with a laugh.
But when they said that on eof the comments attributed to him criticized Benedict XVI, João was upset and saddened. Whenever he sees the Pope on TV, the baiano interrupts what he’s doing in order to listens to him with attention and respect.
More yet...
“I have nothing to do with it, it’s not me,” said João. His desire, he emphazied is that “this story end at once.”
The controversy of João on Facebook was raised by the reporter Leonardo Lichote of O Globo.
And finally...
At the moment, João Gilberto, is preparing for shows he’ll present in June in New York, Boston, and Chicago.
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08:00
 
Sunday, April 25, 2010
The expulsion from paradiseSwift punishment for doubting Thompsons.
 Masaccio, The Expulsion from Paradise, 1427
It all began on 13 April 2010, when Facebook informed me that a certain João Gilberto Prado Pereira wanted to become my friend.
Even before approving the request, I became inundated with questions from musical friends who wanted to know whether the profile was real. I answered all in private, saying that I doubted its authenticity. A similar “Joaõ” had appeared on Orkut a year or two ago and was quickly unmasked. We had it on the best authority that the real JG has nothing to do with computers or the Internet, although he’s kept apprised of cybernautical goings-on through those close to him.
There the matter rested for a few days, until a thread was launched in the João Gilberto community in Orkut by a longtime João fan whom I respect. He had been seduced into believing that the profile was real.
On 19 April, I decided to read the personal info posted on the João Gilberto Prado Pereira profile.
Here’s what I read there:
Current City: New York, NY
Really?
Hometown: Juàzeiro, Brazil
Note the peculiar spellings: Juàzeiro with à and Brazil with z.
Children: Bebel Gilberto, 78 years
JG has three children. Why single out Bebel? (I’ll ignore the child called “78 years,” attributing its inclusion to carelessness.)
Interests: música, violão, carlinhos lyra, stan getz, tom jobim, caetano veloso, menescal, wilson batista, geraldo pereira, noel rosa, caymmi, herbie mann, charlie byrd, claus ogerman, gilberto gil, cole porter
This was the part I found most suspect. Would the real João Gilberto include Carlinhos Lyra, Stan Getz, Roberto Menescal, Herbie Mann, Charlie Byrd, and Claus Ogerman among his interests? Highly unlikely.
About Me: baiano de juazeiro apaixonado pela música e pelo violão
I refused to believe that this obvious drivel could have come from João himself.
Then there were the 48 pages that the profile marked as his favorites, among them Sarah Vaughan, Bossa Nova Jazz, MPB.com, Toquinho, New York City, PokerStars Brasil, Chet Baker, Woody Allen, Dori Caymmi, Charlie Parker, Ray Charles, Pat Metheny, Marcelo Bonfá, Nina Simone, Jair Oliveira, Wilson Simoninha, Biscoito Fino, EMI MUSIC BRASIL.
Also suspect was the profile’s constant clicking “Like” below every comment made by one of his fast-growing legions of “friends.” The latter include famous names like Danilo Caymmi, Jaques Morelenbaum, and Paulo Jobim, who appear to be quite certain of the profile’s identity.
It was, to say the least, bizarre. Would João Gilberto spend all his time on Facebook, enlarging his circle of friends, posting YouTube videos of himself and others, and making predictably characteristic comments? I was tempted to post on his wall, “Unpredictability is the true essence of joãogilbertianismo.” But I didn’t.
Instead, I posted my conclusion that the profile was a fake in Orkut and on my Facebook wall.
At the time (19 April), the profile had 1,455 Facebook friends. Since then, the number has climbed beyond 2,000, but I’m no longer in a position to count. After an absence of several days, I looked for the profile yesterday and found it gone—I had been banned.
Today, the JGPP profile was the subject of an article in O Globo. Danilo Caymmi, Jaques Morelenbaum, and Paulo Jobim were interviewed, with no conclusive results.
If you don’t know João Gilberto personally (and most of us obviously don’t), the only way to find out what’s what is by paying attention to what his personal friends are saying. Arnaldo DeSouteiro called the profile “a complete fake!” (exclamation point his). On the other hand, today I heard through the grapevine that Max De Tomassi had talked to João and was told that “his nephews do all the PC work, and João posts some messages himself. But it’s real.”
Reality is in the eyes of the beholder. Had João Gilberto’s nephews established a fan page in his name on Facebook, the page would have been legitimate even though run by others. However, an earlier João Gilberto fan page already exists (I’m one of the 6,342 Facebook members who say they like this page), and perhaps for that reason the nephews established a profile. Presumably, they harvested the fan page for “friends” when creating the JGPP profile.
That makes things rather tricky. Even if the JGPP profile is sanctioned by João, and even if he occasionally posts there in person (presumably to the elect few, like Jaques Morelenbaum), the vast bulk of the content is generated by others. That’s deceptive. I have no interest in being “friends” with João Gilberto’s nephews masquerading as their uncle.
If the number of the JGPP profile’s “friends” continues to increase at the current rate, it will soon become untenable and require another format, such as a fan page. Bill Gates abandoned his profile in favor of a fan page when things got out of hand.
It will be interesting to watch the evolution of the JGPP profile, but I won’t be the one to do so, having been expelled from paradise by João Gilberto’s nephews.
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14:41
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