Sorry, but what does that have to do with Lauren's website?

Surely whoruwearing isn't her site.

Indeed, I was making comparisons between Luke A and Lauren's official sites.

I have forgotten him tbh, He was not memorable.

Perhaps he wasn't memorable to you but he is to a lot of people and if he was so easy to forgot then there wouldn't be threads made about him 8 months after he won.

This is a page on her site.

Look at the URL!

It's a page on http://www.whoruwearing.co.uk.

How is that her site?

I have never thought it was a negative to aspire to a media career of some kind - indeed I have frequently disagreed with those who use the word 'desperate' to mean nothing more than 'would like to be a model/ actress/ dancer/ musician' or whatever. But Luke WAS being attacked for allegedly wanting 'to be a celebrity' (though there are no particular signs of this - though like nearly all housemates in the history of the show he would probably like being offered something interesting and fun) and other ex housemates who clearly WOULD like to be celebrities are not. So where is the justice in that? Lydia and Deana both have paid-for IMDB pages - nothing wrong with that, they want dancing/ acting/ modelling work, so it is very sensible. Does Luke have one? No, of course not. He has the basic, free entry you get for being on BB and has added nothing at all. Bill deburg is accusing Luke of trying to 'milk what is left of his dwindling notoriety', when he is doing nothing of the kind.




It was set up by fans. 'Luke's website' is a reasonable description for a website devoted to Luke. The fans who set it up are friends of his.


Everything on Luke's twitter is publicly visible. Not everything he puts on facebook is, but there is nothing 'arrogant or cocky' there.




He was put in a position where it was impossible for some people not to feel affronted. There was literally nothing he could do to avoid that.




I would generally apply it to all housemates, taking 'media work' in a broad sense. It is fair imo to critique someone's interviews, 'appearances', tweets, blogs, youtube uploads etc; what is not appropriate imo is to say "I saw x outside Tesco and her friends looked a right bunch of chavs". We don't have that kind of thing much on here - it is far worse on the Showbiz forum. Emily got more than anyone I can remember, and I thought it was wrong then. Everyone seemed to have an Emily story that they had 'heard', and it was always detrimental. You can see how unpleasant this forum would become if it became common for people to post nasty rumours about the private lives of housemates.

I see the url. If you go to Lauren's site, there are various pages you can choose to look at. One of them is a page of tee shirts with her face on.

Does it make any difference what the url is for that page? It is a page of Lauren Carre tee shirts, for sale to those of the public who would like a Lauren Carre tee shirt. I had assumed that since the page is one of the pages arrived at by going to Lauren's site, it was reasonable to suggest that it was part of her site. If it is not, it another Lauren Carre site, which you get to by going to her original site. *shrugs*

To try to get this straight, I've looked for Lauren's site, and this seems to be it: http://laurencarre.net/

It has a "Links" page -- links pages are normally used for links to other sites -- that says "Please help Lauren out by supporting her on these other sites."

The T-shirt page is one of those other sites.

For what the T-shirt page is about, see below.


If the page is supposedly "on her site", or part of her site, then yes, it does matter that it's instead part of a completely different site, as indicated by the URL.

A link to it doesn't make it part of her site! Or would you claim it's now part of Digital Spy too, because there's a link in this thread?

It is not, BTW, another Lauren Carre site either. Not only that, it doesn't even seem to be a site that's selling Lauren T-shirts for her (ie, for money that goes to her) or to make money for her site.

What it seems to be, instead, is a site that lets you (anyone) buy a T-shirt and then upload a picture of yourself that becomes another T-shirt people can buy. You start off being called a "Z-lister" there, but if enough people buy a shirt with your picture on it, you're called an "A-lister". The web site appears to make all the money; you just get the shirt you bought to start the process off and get to have your picture on shirts worn by whatever random people bought shirts with your picture; and maybe you end up as an "A-lister". (There are also some other objects with the pictures on them, not just shirts.) It's a bit of fun and very minor fame, from your POV, with that site making money for itself. At least so far as I've been able to figure out.

Meanwhile, Luke's site actually has a "Store" page that offers "merchandise". It too goes to another site, Spreadshirts, for the actual selling, shipping, etc, but it appears to be a site that lets you make money by selling shirts (or designs), which appears to be what Luke's site is doing.

I always thought on the show that Luke A was rather spineless preferring to plot and bitch with his groupies but never actually confronting the person he had a problem with. In all honesty the house was not hostile to him he just decided to socially alienate himself from the others.

Ok, I think I get that, though I have never heard of such a thing. But surely if Lauren (or her fans who set up the site) have put the link there it is because they hope that people will buy the Lauren tee shirts. I mean it's not a pop-up is it? It is put there deliberately. I want to make it clear that I have no objection to Lauren's site offering people the chance to buy a Lauren Carre shirt, or, for that matter, to anyone else's site offering by any means the chance to buy anything; you can always say no. Personally I doubt whether many of these post-BB sites sell much. I have never seen a Josie's Muckers shirt and she is getting relatively massive publicity.

Maybe other HMs aren't being criticised for it because the critics think those HMs are more upfront about it. I don't know. Maybe it's just because this is a thread about Luke.

But if you think there's nothing wrong with wanting to be a celebrity, and your point about Luke is that he isn't wanting to be, then why not just say that?


Fan sites about a HM are not normally called that HM's site.

And so what if it was "set up by fans"? If I were a housemate and wanted a web site and lacked the technical know-how to make one myself and some fans offered to set one up for me (so that I didn't have to pay someone to do it), that site would be set up by fans. But that wouldn't make it a fan site that was merely about me. It would be my "official" site which just happened to be set up by some fans rather than by some hired professionals. Luke's site is even called lukeandersonofficial and says it is "Luke Anderson Official Website".

If it's just a fan site, Luke should ask them to change the name and to stop calling it "official".


Direct messages? Deleted tweets? Facebook?


OK.


Maybe you would now, because having a special rule only for Luke is obviously not sustainable, but I don't think I've ever seen it claimed before that we should discuss past HMs only when they're on BOTS or doing media work, and then should discuss only those media appearances.

"What is you attitude to ___ now?" is a reasonable question, regardless of whether the "___" HM is doing media work or has returned to 'ordinary life'. Discussions and polls about past HMs regularly appear without anyone saying there's something wrong with it.


That's a very different point. There's no "I saw Luke outside Tesco" sort of post in the thread, and no story about Luke that someone "heard". There's no nasty rumour about his private life. The OP instead reports someone's changed opinion of Luke and asks whether the opinion is fair or true; in the title, it asks more generally what our attitude towards Luke now is.

It wants people to buy Lauren shirts in the same way it wants people to vote for her on one of the other linked sites. In effect, buying a Lauren shirt there is a way to vote for her (and get a shirt) -- enough such votes and she's considered an "A-lister" there. It's quite different from Lauren's site selling shirts to make money for Lauren or for her site.

Luke's side, OTOH, is selling shirts, using the Spreadshirts site in the way someone might use Amazon's self-publishing facilities to sell a book they'd written. (Amazon would handle making the physical books, collecting money, shipping them out, and so on, and would take some of the money, with you getting the rest.)

I never really like the 'this is a thread about x' argument. It is perfectly fair imo if someone is being singled out for criticism to point out other housemates who have done the same or similar acts.


I am not saying he 'doesn't want to be' a celebrity. Who knows what he or any other housemate has privately thought about, unless they say so? I am saying that he has never had any illusions that he IS a celebrity. I know the people who set up the website. Their motivation seems to me kind and guilty of nothing worse than enthusiasm. It is 'official' in the same sense that a biography is 'official', ie agreed to by the subject. I don't suppose there was any competition, but 'official' is a very common part of ex-housemate's twitter names, so I suppose it seemed natural.

I don't have a special rule for Luke. I have posted several times in protest when someone seems to have crossed the line between a public figure and a private figure. I gave Emily as an example, because so many people seemed to 'know someone who has told me...' I protested forcefully that we should stick to discussing given facts about her and the Emily we saw before us, not unchallengable anonymous rumours about her private life.


The OP seems to have vanished, so we can get no further information. But my point, which I admit was not very clear, was that if the allegation means anything at all, (which it may not), it sounds like a private grudge being aired. The overwhelming consensus is that he ISN'T arrogant and cocky; and really, I know him well enough to say that that is a fact. And if someone you have witnessed for months being humble and thoughtful is anonymously accused in an online forum of being the opposite, you are bound to be sceptical about the source.

Yeah, I suspected it was the "singled out" meme at work again.

We should be able to criticise a HM without having also to mention every other HM who might conceivably be criticised in a similar way, and it should be possible to have a discussion of one HM without having to bring in a bunch of others.


"Official" is generally part of a twitter name to indicate that it's really them: that it's their own real twitter account, rather than a fan or someone else who took the name or has a similar one. "Official" as a web site seems more like that than like an "official biography".

If it's really only a fan site, and wants to keep the same name, then I think it ought to make it clear that it's a fan side and isn't connected to Luke. I also think it should say where the money from T-shirt sales goes.


But as I said, that's a very different point, and one that doesn't even apply to this thread. This thread doesn't have unchallengable anonymous rumours about Luke's private life.

What I was talking about as a 'rule' was the earlier idea that that we should discuss past HMs only when they're on BOTS or doing media work, and then should discuss only those media appearances. I don't think I ever saw anything like that suggested before you started suggesting it re Luke.

Why is there such a big discussion about Luke A? He won the show and that is it. There was nothing great or awful about him.

There was nothing about him at all if you ask me.
A very boring HM.

Sounds like the standard stick used to beat ex-HMs. Often used by folks who haven't got the level of attention in the HM's fan hierarchy that they wanted. Or one of their tweets never got answered.
Tells me nothing about Luke A who seems pretty consistent from my (admittedly limited) observation.

That is a very reasonable question. There isn't much new to discuss in the public arena - and indeed what there is (the Alan Titchmarsh show) is not discussed at all. But people still keep starting (invariably negative) threads about him, or shoe-horning negative statements about him into threads about something completely different. The OP to this thread was a fair question, but it just turned into a bashing exercise based on nothing. If anyone actually does want to know what Luke has done/ is like since BB, here is the whole story:

1. He is working as a chef, though not at the same hotel as before BB.
2. He had his chest surgery re-done to reduce the scars, and it looks better.
3. He is still friends with Adam.
4. He is still on friendly terms with Lauren and Deana, but their paths don't really cross.
5. His trophy he won in BB for nominating Luke S (and vice versa) and his blue stripy hoodie he wore so much on BB were both auctioned for charity and raised somewhere around £500 - I can't remember the exact sums but that's roughly right.
6. He will be on BBOTS in the summer, hopefully not sitting next to Natalie Cassidy.
7. He doesn't like One Direction and was teased into making a sponsored video of a one direction song for charity. It was not very good but did raise money for Parkinsons.
8. He is not arrogant or cocky.

There we are. All anyone needs to know.

9. He walked on water
10. He cured cancer

So basically we should only discuss the positive things about him and anything else 'we dont need to know' ok then.

No that's not what wonkey was suggesting, there should be a balance.

Why, do you know anything else? Feel free to add your own interesting FACTS.

No amount of defending a HM is going to change anyones view of that particular person. One will believe what one wants to believe. You either like a person or don't and I guess there is always going to be lovers and haters in the world. If you choose to go in the BB house you have to be prepared for negative as well as positive. For me personally this thread has become boring now. Personally if I were a HM I would try make as much money as I could and milk the 'fame' for all its worth while I could because its unlikely to last forever. I see nothing wrong with selling merchandise, if people feel the need to spend their hard earned money on lining someones pockets that they choose to idolise then thats up to them. Most, although admittedly not all HMs usually just get forgotten and go on to do normal things in life. I actually really liked Luke in the house but I have to admit I have found him to become a little big headed since he came out. His popularity with his followers does seem to have gone to his head a little which I suppose is understandable because he thrived acceptability and he finally realised he has it by a lot of people, which I might add is a good thing for him and his self esteem. If he denied that the popularity hasn't gone to his head a little he is fooling no one but himself. He's a big boy now and doesn't need all this defending unless of course it was his Mum

As often seems to happen in threads about Luke, a lot of the discussion is about whether we should have the discussion.

(A lot of the rest, in this thread, was trying to get straight a few should-have-been-straightforward things about some web sites.)

Anyway, he is the most recent winner, people disagree about how he was as a housemate (and as a person) and about why he won, and discussing Luke is at least a change from discussing HMs and issues that have been discussed again and again and again for years.


What parts were saying there should be a balance?

Instead, Wonkey seems to be saying we should discuss only new, "public arena" events, and that she has listed "the whole story", and "all anyone needs to know", so that in effect there shouldn't be any further discussion.

(BTW, there are other things that have happened in his life since bb13 that are publicly known, but I guess the idea must be that they aren't "public arena". Twitter as a way to communicate with fans is a bit of a double-edged sword, and you may feel you ought to reveal things that might otherwise not have been so widely known.)


People who like Luke seem to prefer to use the appreciation thread, which is understandable but does tend to leave the thread-starting to people who have negative views.

Which housemates do you think he was socially alienated from?

It seems to me that Luke spent time with most, at least, of the housemates it made sense for him to spend much time with.

Confronting may seem the right thing to do, but would it actually have any positive result, or would it just create more problems? I suspect it would tend to be more problems. Becky, for example, would turn it into a big drama, starring herself as the put upon victim.