A colleague and I (Mark Rowe writes) visit the same local cafe every week or two. This lunchtime, we found someone was setting up a camera to face a table arranged with food.
We assumed that the man was a photographer and that the cafe, which like many businesses promotes itself on social media, was having photos taken. Instead it turned out that the man was the most famous, in social media terms, that I am ever likely to meet. For you only have to type ‘beard’ into Youtube and you are directed to ‘beard meets food’, a man whose videos posted online regularly have upwards of a million or more views, and he has some 1.7m followers.
He proceeded to tuck into plates of food that would be ample for several people, topped off by a large dessert. Of several striking things about the sight, the man is not actually particularly fat; he is plainly not a glutton, only someone with an ability to eat extraordinary amounts of food in a short time; for this is the world of competitive eating. And it’s highly popular; as interesting as seeing the man – otherwise anonymous-looking in a black t-shirt – was the reaction of two lads who happened to come into the cafe.
Clearly impressed by the man, they sat facing him and watching him as he videoed himself eating (it’ll be posted on Youtube in about a month, as he has a backlog of other such videos to post; he mentioned being in the US state of Georgia, and Florida). Being a successful competitive eater clearly enables at least someone to make it a living. Perhaps the man now has 1,700,002 followers; but not 1,700,003; not me; because I found myself unable to watch, let alone like watching, as the food has to go down too fast for comfort (the trick seems to be to take swallows of water before you take the food). It was (his word) gross.
What does this have to do with private security? Nothing obviously, because the man was by himself and in no need of a bodyguard, not trying or seeking to make himself stand out in the physical world, online only. But it was a window on the glaring difference between the physical and online worlds; on who is famous online; in ways that are plain odd to people of the pre-internet age. Other examples; children fascinated by videos posted online of other children opening presents; or watching others play computer games, watched by a crowd of spectators.
Contrast that fame with anyone working in private security. Every awards scheme for security officers or managers throws up heartening or life-saving stories; of talking down suicides, or holding off knife attackers. While many cases simply never make the news, last November a security officer did by intervening in the presumed attempted terrorist bombing of Liverpool Women’s Hospital, to name only one case.
The deadline has passed to submit an entry to the 2022 Security Officer of Distinction awards by the group ACS Pacesetters; after the awards lunch on May 25, the winners will appear on the ACS Pacesetters website for the next year and be published online and in the July print edition of Professional Security Magazine. Whoever the winners are, they will not have a million views and their recounted deeds will not have 1.7m followers.
None of this is meant as a criticism of anyone in private security for not doing enough on social media to publicise themselves, their colleagues, or the industry that they are part of; because the very nature of social media is that people follow who they choose; footballers, entertainers, people who are famous for being famous. While fame is not the same as heroism, there is a connection in that if you accept someone as famous, or someone to follow, that implies that you regard them as admirable, or heroic. Strange, who society picks as its heroes.
If your reply is that security officers or anyone doing security (or policing or serving in the military) only occasionally does anything extraordinary, and the rest of the time have a humdrum existence, so presumably will that bearded eater, after he gave a couple of fist-bumps to admirers and opened the cafe door to walk out.
