At first I never even heard of this and apparently this started towards the end of January. In a nutshell, there is an actor named Edison Chen who is in some sort of sex scandal as apparently he has taken hundreds of explicit pictures and videos of him with a lot of different women who happen to be major celebrities in Hong Kong. Somehow the photos and videos were stolen and have been redistributed on the Internet which has created a huge frenzy due to the names of the people who are attached to this ordeal. I’m not sure where this originated from, but someone even created a timeline of the incidents which is kind of crazy when you look at it:
I never even heard of these stars before personally since I am accustomed to western culture and so to me it just sounded like one of those celebrity gossip scandals that I don’t have too much interest in. However, the person is born here in Vancouver and I was asked if I knew anything about it. So I did decide to read more about it and I couldn’t believe how fast this was spreading in the east and quickly affecting the people involved such as business contracts being thrown out as a result of this incident.
For example, Edison himself apparently lost a credit card endorsement deal and from what I read he was suppose to play some type of role in the new Batman movie which is being revoked as a result of this it seems. He even has his own production company that most likely will be affected by this as well. Similarly, for a lot of the women that were involved their squeaky clean image and personality that they relied upon has been compromised which resulted in lost deals as well with some situations being extreme such as marriages that have been called off.
This got me thinking from a business perspective on how it is so important to be professional with your conduct inside and outside of your work. As demonstrated here, that old remark about what people do in their own time shouldn’t matter is sure not the case. Another way to think about it is that people often use the phrase â€People do business with people†which should make you think twice from doing something like that.
Another point that this situation made me think of is being able to admit your mistakes in life as oppose to trying to hide it. Using others as a scapegoat without taking full accountability for your actions will affect your professional image even more. That age old quote that I hear seems to be so fitting for this scenario where “It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a moment to kill it.â€
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