Dubious Categories of Fame

Ace of Spades has at times discussed the bizarre delusion of becoming “blog-famous,” as if someone with a blog could get a double mastectomy and thereby enjoy fame equivalent to being Angelina Jolie who is (you may have noticed) a Hollywood movie star.

Hollywood movie stars are famous, by definition.

A blogger who became a Hollywood movie star would also be famous — not for blogging, but for starring in movies.

TV defines fame. People on  TV are legitimately famous. That’s it. Nothing else counts. So the notion that your blogging will make you a celebrity is a delusion. Famous people on TV may have blogs, but it isn’t the blogging that does it, it’s the being-on-TV thing.

Successful is one thing, famous is another, and it’s important to keep the difference between those concepts clear in your mind.

This is not a random meta-philosophical musing, but is instead inspired by the phrase “Internet celebrity” in a headline:

Internet celebrity sought
in Clark man’s murder

A desire to be famous as “Kai the hatchet wielding hitchhiker” — gosh, I don’t know, maybe it’s a sign you’ve got problems. Or something.

 

13 comments

  1. Old habits are hard to break.

    or

    When all you’ve got is a hatchet everything looks like the back of someone’s head.

  2. I was famous, once.

    Then a couple days later, the other kids in kindergarten learned to tie their shoes, too.

    Now I pretty much do whatever I want. I’ll take that over fame any day.

  3. Does a BOLO poster at the Registration desk of .
    every Marriott hotel count as famous?

  4. My brother and a buddy used to go on occasional cross country forays. They had BOLO’s in every Pizza Hut between NC and Seattle, Wash. for “Dine ‘n Dash.” Good times.

  5. My take on it was, “If they didn’t want naked people walking through the lobby, they should have put the bar out by the pool where it belonged.”

    And thank God so much of my life took place before the Internet and cell-phone cameras.

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