valisk's Journal: Sealing yourself off in a little cocoon

What is it like, I wonder, to seal yourself off from the world in a little cocoon.
Surrounded only by people telling you that you are right and wonderful.
I suppose that to find out the answer to that question I'd need to become famous and have a large entourage of hangers-on.
I could then safely ignore my fans and the real world, like many artists I could set up a website which doesn't have any contact details at all, or I could throw in a forum and perhaps a blog but never answer any queries directly.
I could imagine myself to be the most special person in the world, and everybody surrounding would offer no dissenting opinions.
Or I could make the decision to realise that I am a real person living in the real world, that my fans might have questions that I could answer, that they might have idea and feedback which will let me serve their needs better.
Hell even Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems responded to a fan letter I sent him and he's running a multi billion dollar corporation, yet I can't contact my favourite band because they are too up their own arseholes to consider the idea that talking to their fans, even in a limited way, could only make them more popular.