(My
gratitude to Porter Anderson for the title of this post, which I cribbed from
his essay, Social Media: ‘Sharing’ our Narcissism. For those of you
unfamiliar with the original myth, Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in
a pool of water, so he lay down beside the pool and stared at himself until he
died.)
Once upon a time, I
believed, as many still do, that successful people were extra special because
they had superior talent. Then I wrote a book which has actually been read by
people I do not know personally. This could be viewed as a form of success (tilt
you head and squint a bit) although certainly not enough to make me in any way famous.
(I’m talking about being famous in a good way here. Winning a Darwin award is
risky and serial-killing is both risky and messy.) Naturally, my failure to
achieve fame is a terrible disappointment to me, but it does raise an
interesting question: What mysterious X factor separates the famous (in a good
way) from the merely talented?
Everyone has a
certain amount of natural ability and the capacity to excel at something. But fame
wannabes, unless we are genetically endowed with extra specialness as is the
case with royalty, cannot just stand on a soapbox shouting, “I’m really, really
special!” We may very well be, but who is going to believe us?
If we are serious
about becoming famous, we must master and our area of expertise with
demonstrable results and—here’s what I think is the X factor—acquire external accreditation.
These requirements are difficult to achieve, but having attempted both, I believe
that external verification requires greater investment of effort than
establishing our base credentials, and is therefore the more daunting. Only
those of us with an unshakeable belief in our own specialness have sufficient
motivation and perseverance win the fame game.
In general, fame makers
are only accessible to the hoi polloi via ladders of increasingly influential
relationships. Fame seekers must cultivate well-placed taste leaders who can focus
the attention of the wider world on our specialness. This is extremely
time-consuming, not to mention inherently deceitful and occasionally boring.
We’re not really interested in hearing about your gall-bladder operation, we
just want you to say nice things about us to your millions of followers, so we pretend
to be interested. It is also somewhat risky, since exposure of such sycophantic
behavior substantially reduces our chances of acquiring accolades.
But is it possible
to cut out the middleperson and proceed directly to fame via the internet? Recently,
there has been a great deal of speculation about this revolutionary new DIY
path to mass recognition. We no longer have to suck up to a few snobby, hard-to-attract
experts; we can interact directly with potential fans.
In some ways,
cultivating internet relationships should
be easier. Personal appearance is no longer important. No one cares if we
shower twice a day or twice a year, because all anyone ever sees of us is a
cartoon avatar or an old image cropped out of a group picture and probably
photo-shopped. My internet presence is three years, twenty pounds, and ten
shades of grey out of date. I’ve saved a small fortune on clothes because most
of my internetting is done in this ratty old bathrobe. Similarly, only the
appearance of relationship matters. Just because we’re e-friends doesn’t
mean I actually read the posts about your gall bladder operation. (Unless, of
course, you are one of my real friends, in which case I am deeply concerned and
hope you get well soon.) The important thing is slapping that “like” button,
or, in cases where more personal interaction seems called for, tossing a LOL or
OMG! into the comments.
There are two
downsides to seeking fame on the internet:
Downside one:
We’re going to have to do some math
here. If F represent fame, and n
represents the number of relationships that must be cultivated to achieve F, and f represents an individual fan, and I represents a person who has influence over some number of fans
greater than 1, then the following two equations are both true: F=fn (DIY method) and F = In (traditional method). I have no idea how big n is, it really depends
on the amount of fame required. However I’m damn sure it’s bigger in the first
equation than it is in the second. I’d have to be insanely special to be worth
spending that much time promoting me.
Downside two: Finding
a way to stand out from the millions of bloggers and posters and tweeters competing for the same fan
eyeballs. Some fame seekers take the direct approach. “Follow me on Twitter!” “Like my Facebook page!” While I applaud
the honesty, I suspect this does not attract all that many eyeballs. Another
option is to sneak a plug into the comments of some more famous person’s post. “Great post! I blogged about the same thing
last week. Check it out here.” Personally, I think most eyeballs see
right through this kind of blatant hijacking. A more sophisticated technique is
to craft a tantalizing comment in the hope that someone will click on your ID
to find out who you are. “I think we met
that taxi driver’s cousin last week in Tangiers, except we ended up at a camel
rodeo. Posted by PleaseCheckMeOut
at 2:56 AM” This method may attract a second glance for those who have
sufficient material about their specialness to pull it off. I don’t.
Difficulty aside,
have you noticed the fatal flaw in the DIY approach to fame? It’s not all that
different from standing on a soapbox, is it? Shouting out that we are special, which
again we may very well be, does not make us famous. For that, we still need
independent verification from an accredited source. Without it, all we are
doing is lying face down at the me-pond.
Which brings me to why
I haven’t been spending much time on social media recently. After two
years of haphazardly working the DIY approach to fame, I have come to the end
of my tolerance for me. I’m just not special enough to be worth the effort of
becoming famous. It’s time to turn away from the me-pond and move on to
something more interesting.
When I figure out
what it is, I’ll let you know.
