Simu Liu is (probably) the world’s most successful stock model
Before starring in Kim's Convenience and getting his own Marvel Studios movie, Simu Liu was a stock model
Aux Features Simu Liu
Have you ever seen an ad for a business school or a Zumba class and thought “Wait, that guy looks a lot like Simu Liu? Well, your eyes are not deceiving you. It’s definitely the MCU newcomer. Turns out Liu might be the world’s most successful stock model. The actor has tweeted over the years about how, at the beginning of his career while strapped for cash, he decided to give stock modeling a try. But with Shang-Chi in theaters now, many Marvel fans are just now uncovering the photoshoot from years ago.
According to Insider, you can find the stock pictures on Getty if you search terms like “cheerful East Asian coworker,” “East Asian,” “business person,” and “coworker.” And though Liu is smiling brightly in many of the photos it begs the question: is anyone ever that happy at work? Liu wondered the same thing on Twitter, before linking out to one of his stock pictures that he’d posted on Instagram. (He’s since deleted the Instagram post but the tweet is still up.)
Many of the viral stock images are from a photoshoot he did in 2014. And, according to Liu’s tweet from 2017, when one of those stock photos ended up in a QuickBooks Accountant book, he relished in the irony since he used to be an accountant. He’s also posed for fitness stock photos (sadly he’s not shirtless in them, but that’s what Kim’s Convenience is for). In 2018, he posed in front of an ad at the gym and tweeted, “To those of you wondering; yes that’s me in many @GoodLifeFitness locations across Canada. I was doing Zumba in a stock photo shoot in which I was paid $120. It was 2014, I needed it. No I have no idea why it’s still up. Yes, I thoroughly enjoy Zumba.”
Last year, Liu jokingly asked people to please stop buying the pictures, but now with the stock images going viral, we foresee many people trying to get their hands on the Marvel star’s 2014 pictures to promote their business—or to make memes (the latter seems like a far more ethical route). Liu seems to be embracing that the pics are going viral, tweeting a stock image of himself pointing at a computer screen and laughing, captioned, “Me laughing at the people who thought we’d flop.” He is presumably referring to Shang-Chi’s box office success.
58 Comments
“cheerful (probably) East Asian coworker,”
And though Liu is smiling brightly in many of the photos it begs the question: is anyone ever that happy at work?One of my biggest problems with stock photo services is that everyone is just idiotically happy in them. Sometimes I just want regular looking people walking down the street, not a 1980s McDonald’s ad mid-song-and-dance number.And I am obligated to point out that you used “begs the question” incorrectly.
I’m also obligated to point out that language evolves and that the “demands that you ask the obvious question” usage has long since supplanted “assumes the conclusion” as the most common usage.
“Raises the question” is a perfectly fine expression. People should use it. You know, so as not to muddle the very specific situation for which “begs the question” was uniquely created.
I agree. But the battle has already been lost.
I’m prepared to be the Taliban, the Che Guevara, the those Japanese soldiers in WWII that were still on islands in the middle of the Pacific long after WWII ended, of “begs the question”
Evolution takes a long time. This nonsense only started in common usage because of the Internet (because if any of them wrote like this in high school or college, their teachers should have told them to cut it out). So there is plenty of time to shame people into not doing it.
If only shame actually worked anymore.
“bceause of the Internet”…which has been part of mass discourse for more than 20 years. That’s plenty of time for an idiom to shift its primary usage.Anyway, here’s an article that points out that there’s an obvious distinction between the “raises the question” and “assumes the conclusion” usages, which is essentially whether the phrase is used as transitive or intransitive: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=36987
“But X begs the question.” <- assumes the conclusion
“But X begs the question, ‘Y?’” <- raises the question
The latter is not “incorrect” by any means. It’s simply another usage and it’s easy to distinguish which usage is meant by whether something follows the phrase “begs the question.” The latter usage does not beggar the previous usage.
No, the whole point of begging the question is to muddle the issue of what the question is, so it is logical to emphasize the question being dodged by specifying it as the question being begged.“Jesus must have been the Messiah, because He fulfilled so many prophecies.”
“Since you’re citing passages from the Bible as examples of fulfilled prophecies, you’re begging the question of whether Christianity is true.”“The latter is not “incorrect” by any means.”
1. It’s not the original meaning.2. It makes communication more confusing.3. There is a perfectly good alternative.4. The main motivation for it is the original meaning; it’s hard to imagine someone independently deciding that “beg” is the best word to denote a question being raised, without first hearing the phrase and misunderstanding its meaning.So those are four means by which it is incorrect. You can argue that you do not find those means sufficient to consider it incorrect. But don’t claim that it is by *no* means incorrect.
Also, a verb being used “transitively” means that it takes a direct object. “question” is the direct object of “begs” regardless of whether anything follows it, so “begs” is being used transitively in both uses. If you’re treating the entire phrase “begs the question” as somehow being a verb, then if it’s followed “of Y”, then it’s not being used transitively; “of” is a preposition, and an object introduced by a preposition is an indirect object, not a direct object.
I hear what you’re saying, but it’s still a prescriptivist approach. You’re starting with the assumption that the original phrase “is correct,” but where does that assumption come from? Someone coined the phrase originally, and could easily at that time been accused of inventing nonsense that there were already other perfectly good phrases for. Then it became something used in discussions of informal logical fallacies, became enshrined as something educated people know and the rabble don’t, and now gets used as a bludgeon by people who think language should only be used in the ways they learned, or who want to show off how smart they are. The original usage of “beg” isn’t even a common usage of “beg” in any other context at this point, so what’s the rationale for preserving “beg the question” in amber?
Anyway, “more confusing” sounds like a you problem, because I’ve never had any trouble distinguishing between the two usages. If it’s followed with a question then it’s “raises the question,” if it’s not then it’s “assumes the conclusion.” (The bit about transitivity was meant as an (admittedly imprecise) analogy to how additional clauses in a sentence can affect intended meaning; I’m well aware of the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs.)
All I can think of is this:
“You’re starting with the assumption that the original phrase “is correct,””No, I’m presenting the original meaning as *one factor*, and showing that there are *three other* factors against using it for “raise”. You, on the other hand, present no argument *for* using for “raise”. If there were a whole bunch of reasons for using it for “raise”, and the only argument against it was the original meaning, and yet I were still advocating against that use, your accusation of “prescriptivism” would be a lot stronger.“If it’s followed with a question then it’s “raises the question,” if it’s not then it’s “assumes the conclusion.”” Noting whether it’s followed by a question is still one more thing a listener has to do. Moreover, I *already presented an argument against this*, which you simply ignored.
Using it to mean “raises the question” is incorrect, and I could care fewer about your feelings otherwise.
Lookie here, boys, we got ourselves a prescriptivist!
See now you’re begging any number of questions on whether prescriptivism is bad 😉
Nah, I take it as axiomatic that prescriptivism is bad. 😉
I’m always down to start from first principles!
A man (or woman, or other gender, or possibly horse or emu) after my own heart!
Lookie here, we have someone who doesn’t understand irony!
Thank you. Please point to the article when “begs the question” has been used “correctly.”I’ll wait.
BRB, gonna go start my new career as “stock model with resting bitch face.”
I first became aware of the concept of stock photo modeling when I noticed the same woman in the same outfit on advertising in two completely different places.She was smiling in one. The other was RBF.
Or that meme of a few years back “woman laughing while eating salad” — apparently there are dozens of stock photos of that. Rather than “woman reluctantly eating a salad rather than the burger or pizza that she really wants”.
There are times in my career I have been that happy at work. They were almost always Friday, after a liquid lunch.
The only time I was that happy at work was when I was a nanny.
No one is ever that happy in an office.
I dunno, i think it depends on who you are, and who your coworkers are.Just saying, Matt Lauer probably had a different opinion than his coworkers on that one.
The woman in the Unfaithful Boyfriend stock picture seems rather unhappy.
I remember once there was a Reddit AMA with a stock photo model that had an image turned into a meme (it was something like “Good Girl Gina,” or one of those type of advice animals formats). It was interesting in how uninteresting it was, as you could see the redditors realize that this was just some person who had posed for a photo once, and she didn’t seem to particularly be aware of of care about her meme status (despite agreeing to do the AMA).
He did a Reddit AMA last week, and it was fucking delightful. =D
.
I’d watch his Marvel movie
Harold the Duck?
Ben Parker, Spider-Man (Earth-3145)
I don’t know. He looks too… what’s the word?…. Alive? Yeah, he looks to alive to play Ben Parker.
Wasn’t John Boyega a stock model at some point, too?
He was indeed.
Well, for what it’s worth, this is the most entertaining stock model story I’ve ever read!https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2013/nov/05/sex-obese-men-stock-shot-model
Mmmm… I think he STILL might be a stock model… 😬
Also some good shirtless Simu Lui in his turn as “Garbage Boy” in Nora From Queens. That episode is most delightful!
Great episode, but especially everything involving Shu Shu.
Ugh Shu Shu is the best. “Rustic AF” makes me laugh just thinking about it.
I’d kill to hear the joke that brought down that room!
He definitely won the team meeting that day.
He just laid everyone off
“The name of Kumail’s character in Eternals is gonna be Kingo. Kingo! Marvel really expects us to take that seriously!”
“Yo soy el kingo!”“The word you are looking for is rey.”“Whatever.”
MCU Writing Cabal Member #1: So, you’re saying “Kingo was his name-o”?MCU Writing Cabal Member #2: Put that in the script.
“that’s what she said”
potential runner up?
Seems like one of the least embarrassing things about a now-famous person’s past to trickle up.
If any question is being begged, it’s who the world’s most successful stonk model is. (Or does it have to be “stonks”?)
that is great
Stock photos make me think of Veridian Dynamics commercials, which were basically a series of stock photos acted out.