Arrogance: Charming Offline...Dangerous Online!

The most difficult aspect of the entertainment industry is that, in the face of all that is undecided, you still have to remain confident and arrogant, while dealing with mounds and mounds of rejection. Working offline, this may be indeed charming, but online, it can become extremely dangerous to one's career.

Working in an offline world, peer to peer interactions are just as much about ' having talent' as it is about 'how you learn to work with someone', yet when you have the ability to see someone face to face, you have the ability to 'win them over' by your visible attitude and work ethic. A person who is 'arrogant', you let him/her get away with it because you know what he/she does, and having met, you may just find it charming.

Working online, 'arrogance' can cost you jobs faster than you have time to explain yourself. Unlike meeting a person face to face, the employer has a 'delete' button when you do not want to deal with someone.

The biggest reason is this...Written word is more powerful than spoken word.

Combine this with the over-abundance of confidence that comes from the monster created by someone using a computer anonymously, without fear of consequence, 'arrogance' will leave an employer wondering, 'Who the heck does this person really think he/she is, and why do they feel they can write to me this way if I have never met them?'.

Arrogance awakens the 'always trying to save time-monster' behind a computer and fills it with a terrible resolve.

I give you two direct, yet very serious examples from inside Voice123.

• Example #1: The Arrogant Behavior After the Passing of a Legend

When Don Lafontaine passed away this summer, Voice123 was flooded with emails from very 'green talents' who told us arrogantly, 'I am your next Don Lafontaine! Please listen to my demo!'.

The monster that awoke in our staff from seeing these emails believed that this was the most disgusting display of behavior, and the very voice talents who said this were either deleted, not acknowledged, or were told, 'If you thought this was a good idea, you need more experience for working online.' As much as we like to help talents, we do not wish to do business with someone who thinks an email like this was a good idea.

I sat back and thought about it, to be fair, 'How would an open-minded youth, who obviously feels effected by what he/she is seeing behave in this situation?' I thought, 'Maybe they were trying to do some sort of tribute?'. Regardless, it was a bad idea. Why? The very arrogance that someone, who has no experience whatsoever, can 'pick up the torch(as they put it)', was disgusting. Now, if we saw who wrote this, we could gauge that the person was maybe just making a kid's mistake, but we cannot make that justification through a written email.

Needless to say, a person who made this mistake on many websites may have set themselves back a few months of progress.

• Example #2: The Political Impersonation Contest & "Those Who Should Have Won"

I am no stranger to how the industry works. You want to always show them you are the 'best', and you want to fight to prove it. Maybe this type of aggressive behavior works somewhere in the world, but working online, it damages your reputation quicker than you can spread your good name.

Unfortunately, when that contest ended, I received a couple of emails questioning whether or not Voice123 was being 'fair' with the voting process because certain people told me, 'My friends who have been in the business for years, told me I was the best.' I was told 'it was in my best interests to compensate them for this unfair action'.

The mere arrogance that one person, who was told by his friends he was the best, now believes that everyone else was not as good, which then, entitled him to something for free was enough to make any decent person vomit.

Now, I know that this person is most likely trying to get something for free, but to accuse someone who has put effort into something that will benefit everyone, and then to market that person to 40,000 perspective employers, only to turn around, and say, 'You owe me more' is a display of arrogance that awakens the terrible monster who arrogantly fights, as one person needs to be reminded that how you work online results in consequences.

I have always viewed 'arrogance' as the belief that someone feels they are above everyone else, and usually needs to come down to earth. Yet, working online, if you upset the wrong people, you will find yourself crashing to earth with sometimes unrepairable damage, and in an anonymous computer age, you will find plenty of people smart enough to create software to do so. It is almost like 'Revenge of the Nerds', so in turn, arrogance went out with the 80's.

As pretty much the entire world turns to computers to solve problems, the last thing to do is to approach a problem or disagreement with 'arrogance'. If you think the online world is lonely now, just wait to email lots of people about how great you are, and never hear back from any of them.

• In conclusion...here are the biggest 'no-no's' in writing an email to someone online:

1. Use of profanity. To see it written, shows you lack the ability to express yourself in a professional manner.
2. Capital letters to emphasize a statement. It comes off as yelling, and shows inexperience.
   
3. Sarcasm. It cannot be written. If you make a joke, you have to acknowledge it is a joke. Otherwise, leave it out if you have problems using: "LOL, :), or hahaha"
4. Declaritive statements that tell others to do something for you, instead of applying to reason and solution, as to how something should be worked out.
5. Empty threats with no foundation or truth, be it legal or physical, are the sure way to either get your email deleted or even arrested (in worst-case scenarios), if you are not applying a reason or solution to the problem in a professional manner.

You simply never know who you are talking to, and if you do not check your ego at the door when writing an email, someone will surely do his/her best to remind you it should be, and they wont always tell you. They may just show you in their actions.