I'm not a cynical person. I didn't "automatically assume" it was product placement.
(For the record, I made no such assertion of anyone--including the poster to whom I was responding.)
I have noticed for some time that nearly everyone is ga-ga that a celebrity is interested in D&D...a perfect opportunity for Hasbro to "stoke" behind the scenes: "Hey, if you'll mention our game again, we'll give you a bit of cash".
Perhaps that's because so many in our hobby have suffered so mugh negative stereotyping that many are desperate to hold up an icon--particularly one who appears to contradict some of those stereotypes as thoroughly as does Vin Diesel--to dispel them. And if Hasbro wants to leverage that, good for them--and good for us. The current "Geek-chic" fad won't last forever; eventually, geeks will just be geeks, again.
And then I see this cake...a very pricy cake...to make the fonts exactly like the 3e font required some serious effort...if it was made by a professional baker, that's a huge fee. And I see it's a pretty slick, nigh-professionally-lit photo. That's what evoked my question.
Like: "Hey, if we make this birthday cake for you and hire a professional photographer to shoot it...would you post it on your fb wall?"
As I said, I might be mistaken...I'm simply offering another point of view.
In that case, let me offer a couple of (no less plausible) scenarios:
1: Vin Diesel has friends who, collectively or individually, can afford to and care enough for Mr. Diesel that they are willing to spend as much on a birthday cake as a decent wedding cake might cost and...
2: the professional bakery, for reasons of its own, has professional photographs of its creations taken, or...
3: Vin Diesel actually has a friend who is a professional photographer (perhaps even a contributer to the commissioning of the cake), who wanted to take a professional photograph of it and came to the party prepared to do so.
What matters is that there be some distinction between self-initiated culture and corporate-steered, product-placed, commodified, fake culture.
It's the difference between knowing that a teacher or pastor or artist or filmaker or reporter is working out of their own free impulse, rather than trying to slip in corporate advertisements into the classroom, sanctuary, gallery, theater, and mind.
Does it really matter, though? Or, to put it more philosophically, is it really possible for culture to be fake? No matter its origins, doesn't its wide-spread adoption automatically qualify a culture as "real?"
And, anyway, how else is a culture going to spread, but through the indoctrination of outside influence? Show me a teacher or pastor or artist or filmmaker or reporter who does not have to incorporate their employer's/patron's/consumer's interests into their work, and I'll show you one who is unemployed/unfunded and of limited cultural impact. At least during their lifetime.
Unless we're talking about Prince, of course.
