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Comment by JacobAldridge | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the George Takei suggestion was intelligent situational awareness ... or if everyone has him as the first suggestion because he's basically the platonic form of a Facebook celebrity?

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If you are not aware, Shatner doesn't like Takei.

If it wasn't a Facebook app, I wouldn't expect it to know that.

And Takei doesn't like Shatner.

I didn't know that, so I dug around for the cause. From a recent NYP article:

  Takei married his husband in 2008 and Shatner became enraged when 
  he claimed he wasn’t invited. He ranted against Takei in an 
  online interview. [...]

  Shatner called Takei’s wedding a publicity stunt and hypothesized 
  that their feud stemmed from Takei’s unwillingness to playing 
  second fiddle to Shatner on “Star Trek.”

It seems to be mostly based on petty, even comical stuff like this. This may sound paradoxical, but as someone who always had a lot of respect for both of them, this is disappointing and a bit of a relief at the same time.

That wasn't the cause. According to Takei, they didn't get along even during Star Trek. "Petty, comical stuff" is what the media narrative consists of because they're two amusing personalities, and we want to be amused by them. Also they're two old men who wouldn't have spoken for the last 50 years if it weren't for an avalanche of fan-cash that has forced them into continued contact and some civility.

From what I can tell he's had a bad relationship with a number of the other cast members since the original series's filming, since they thought he was too self-centered and kept trying to minimize screentime given to the supporting cast. The feud became kind of well known among fans, because four of the actors (Walter Koenig, James Doohan, Nichelle Nicols, and Takei) often aired their dislike of Shatner at Star Trek conventions. Though for his part Shatner claims it was a one-sided feud he didn't even know about until 1993: he says he discovered the issue when he tried to interview a bunch of the old cast for his memoir, and several wouldn't talk to him, or did but had negative things to say.

>Though for his part Shatner claims it was a one-sided feud he didn't even know about until 1993

Which, of course, humorously confirms all of the casts' characterizations of him as a selfish egomaniac in a wig and a girdle. I think that Shatner is aware of this (within the past 20 years, not at the time) and plays into it for the humor value and a media bump if he's currently selling something. He's always selling something.

Which basically sums up the setup for the film Galaxy Quest, which lampoons the Star Trek cast archetypes masterfully.

I'm just glad that he's annoyed that he wasn't invited rather than annoyed at gay marriage

The latter. George Takei makes Facebook money by making it more engaging. Facebook wants more celebrities to see what George Takei is doing so they do it too.

Sure this is good for facebook cause pageviews but all the Takei shares that show up on my feed are almost invariably reddit frontpage reposts. I guess he adds volume to facebook, but it's not very quality volume imo, if anyone else shared the stuff he did, it wouldn't collect thousands of upvotes/likes/etc.

Plus if he really has a staff doing it, then the whole "wow what a zany old man who is "relevant" and reads reddit/9gag/wherever people think the content comes from" thing kinda falls apart.

I suspect it's a very simple calculation based on mutual followers.

I think it's the vast AI that runs Facebook saying this madness has gone too far. ;-)

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