In response to an article "A nation of attention whores" by Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon.com (2009-10-16) - I posted this comment :
I wanna' be famous.
Yep, me too, just like you and everybody else. I want to be a popular celebrity and I have become obsessed with achieving that goal. This new addiction has overwhelmed me and I have succumbed to a new mantra of greed: "I want it now and I want it forever".
Andy Warhol's quote has inspired me. He said - "In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes" (he is often misquoted). Well Andy, it is the future and I now only have one option left available to me (I've tried everything else)! I'm going to join the worldwide web interchatnet community of Myspacefacebookskypetwittmessenger. Yep, that's for me. I'll join in a big way, everything, all of them now, right at this moment. Here we go, my personality will now become my aethernality.
But crikey, have I got some decisions to make before I present my new ego to the world. But first I am required to prove I am a person, not an animal, by verifying secret words. I need to register and validate, create and confirm. I must invent passwords and divulge personal information or choose to be anonymous and lie. So many choices, so little time. My own portrait photo or should I use a fake? An amusing profile if I'm looking for a date? How honest should I be in this pseudo digital text fest as I divulge and disguise information that is unsubstantiated and unconfidential?
Should I be concerned that privacy is no longer sacrosanct and the invasion of privacy has become a peculiar perversion. Miss-confidential is slowly being undressed before our very eyes. Sharing has become daring and everybody wants to know and watch. Quick, I must do, share or say something right now, someone might notice. Hey, look at me - I'm important!
I wanna' be a celebrity - I can hardly wait.
Wow, look at how many friends I have. That was quick. See, all these people like me already. And look at the access I have to places and things and people all over the world and everybody wants to know me. Me, me! Now I can truly connect with all those other people who are already celebrities. Now I can make all those witty little comments and have a cool bio and some pics to share and a list of my favourites. I can check in with Britney, share recipes with Martha and catch all the goss, choose my hottest person, make connections, do my stuff and get noticed.
Now look what's happened. I can't believe it, oh wow! Tom Anderson is now my friend and he's sharing his celeb pals and gals with me. And look, now I've got followers and friends and some of them want to share details with me. They all seem very friendly and quite willing to get to know me better and one of them has sent me a picture. She's a nice girl and she has a sister and they were wondering if I might like to join them there in the spa with that bottle of baby oil and.......just hang on a minute! What is going on here? She shouldn't be doing that! Not on camera in front of the world and on my screen right in my face! Oh no, this is not good. Now I'm over excited about my new friends and I'm just going to have to click here and move that over there until.......oh no, what was that? Woops! That shouldn't have happened. She is such a naughty girl and I'm a little bit distracted here. She can't do that! Oh no, I can't do that! Not here, not now, not with the videocam still on, gimme a break!!
Oh my gosh, now I really am famous - how cool is that?
Look at the screen. My god, what a mess. It probably wasn't exactly what Andy had in mind but it certainly worked for me. Do you feel like a cigarette after that?
Damn the infernal eternal world wide netweb! In 15 minutes I'm famous, but not as the type of celebrity I had in mind. I have just been seduced like a bee to pollen and have just managed to splash my ego and all it's digital glory all over the world.
I'm famous now, but for all the wrong reasons. Good on ya Martha. Up yours Britney. Get a life Tom!
Welcome fame. Here it is. There it was.
Certainly can't edit that. Nup, there is no 'delete' button for that one. No 'undo' will fix that. To hell with 'refresh', once was enough thank you! Worse than hitting 'reply' or 'send to all'. Hello you idiot, are you sure you want to f****n save this? Yes, I am certainly a d******d sending that into the eternal digital library.
I shoulda' thought about that, definitely not cool! Forever available for viewing, imprinted in the aethernet for anyone and everyone to see anytime, anywhere, forever. My 15 minutes of fame complete with all the glorious consequences.
It's hard not to be famous when you are no longer anonymous.
( In 1968, Andy Warhol became bored with his famous line. He changed it to : "In 15 minutes everybody will be famous".)
The Scottish artist, Momus, said it another way : "In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people".
Personally, I think it's all a wank.
(This is an edited version of an original comment by goblinono on Salon.com)
