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I might wind up supporting him, but a lot of your information is (at best) misleading. “Moonlighting as a rapper” is actually just occasionally singing the lyrics to Eminem at coffee houses. “Came with nothing” means being a landed aristocratic Brahmin-born engineer with a degree from India. He’s an “accomplished pianist” in the sense that he can hit some keys with graceful mediocrity. I’m too lazy to fact check everything but I’m going to assume large Ramaswathes of it are wrong, and I find the adulation a bit Ramaswarmy.
Funny, and I was intentionally leaning into grandiosity above, but I do think you're underselling things a bit. He actually had a rap persona 'Da Vek' that he wrote / freestyled his own oft political lyrics for in front of large audiences, it wasn't just occasional karaoke -
The 'accomplished pianist' language comes directly from The New Yorker's profile of him, ymmv with how impressive you suppose that may actually be. Here's a longer video where he seems to be able to play reasonably complex pieces purely from memory - agreed that it doesn't seem like professional level, but surely on par with Clinton's famed saxophone skills at the very least?
(Obviously these are somewhat trivial asides, but I think they reflect a genuine innate multi-disciplinary talent indicative of high g)
As for his parents' financial circumstances, couldn't find much on their background but Vivek and his brother Shankar (a doctor who graduated from Harvard and Brown and also went on to found a billion+ dollar company) went to majority-black public schools in Dayton, Ohio until the violent incident upthread and Vivek talks about how he had to go with his dad to night classes for law school as a kid because his mom worked extra hours and they couldn't get a sitter. Seems like a relatively humble background, at least in comparison to his Ivy League peers, and the extreme upward mobility aspect is undeniable
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Are ye all taking OP seriously? I thought it was clearly tongue-in-cheek and indeed was slagging the guy off with the adulation, but maybe that's me reading it through an Irish lens, where this kind of praise would definitely be intended to be read as "this fella thinks the sun shines out of his arse so I'm going to mock him relentlessly".
I keep forgetting that for Americans, all their geese are swans and they'd read this kind of piece as not satirical but genuine 😁
Yeah for a forum supposedly comprised of high-IQ individuals, a little indirect humor seems to go over quite a few heads here. Poe's law and all that, but the OP seems obviously just a kick-off for discussion of Vivek.
“A little”?
The OP was blindingly obvious humor.
Much of the good discussion requires taking it at face value - responding point by point to some of the ridiculous exaggerations, for instance.
But taking the sentiment seriously:
... is ridiculous. No single person is all of those things, on the entire planet.
Maybe I'm wrong and this wasn't meant in jest. But I don't think so.
Let me rephrase.
It was so obviously ridiculous that it made people confused and/or disdainful. "A little" humor is one thing. This much sets off alarm bells for a troll or, possibly, a zealot. Someone who is burying their opinion behind irony and comedy. That's hard to engage with, and it's also not Speaking Plainly™. Just because this guy wanted to imitate the Navy Seal copypasta doesn't mean he's actually looking for a good discussion.
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It's less effusive than most "mainstream" media coverage of the Obamas over the last 20 years.
I know you can point to the old “thrill up the leg” and other bits of purple prose, but you’re still being pretty hyperbolic.
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To be fair he may have been a lot better in his schooling days. I played for more than a decade growing up and havent touch a piano regularly for years. If i were to play something I would actually choose that exact song and id probably play at his level in the video at best
Really? Bach's Prelude in C major from the Well Tempered Clavier is significantly easier to maintain a regular flow in if you haven't played in a long time and sounds nicer too if you ask me.
I haven't played piano in 15 years or more, and the piece I would go for would be Rach prelude op. 3 no. 2. Sometimes familiarity beats everything else?
Yeah, familiarily definitely helps (I personally would go for Liszt's Liebestraum No 3 due to familiarity, plus also the beauty of that piece can be appreciated by everyone, no matter how base they may be), but the prelude is easy enough that you should just be able to sight read it at a decent tempo with high accuracy if you used to be good, and also the arpeggios are such that even if you miss a note for a neighbor it'll still sound OK.
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Maybe, but I also see no evidence anywhere that he was ever an “accomplished pianist”. This phrase has a very specific meaning that is unevidenced. It doesn’t mean that you’ve played an instrument for a decade, but have won competitions or appeared in legitimate productions.
Thats fair, and im not saying im was ever at that level either of course. Tho i assume to a normie “accomplished pianist” means playing difficult pieces, not necessarily “next Lang Lang”
Funnily enough it was Lang Lang who cemented Alla Turca’s status as a meme song.
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