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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2706 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 30, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Is being famous worth it? I used to think people who said no were coping. But it does seem awfully stressful.

I have heard that being famous is something you have to actively maintain, and it is not just something that happens without you being able to do anything about it. I think if you already are famous, and systematically begin to refuse every request to appear on TV, or attend a public event, or be interviewed for a newspaper, etc., then you will become not famous relatively quickly. So it would then follow that people who are famous are actively trying to be so, and that would indicate that they have made the calculation and decided that it is worth it for them.

That seems to apply to pundits, influencers, etc. They're continuously trying to get in the press.

But many artists, sportsmen, businessmen will actively try to be less famous. Naomi Osaka's meltdown about press availability, "I'm just here so I don't get fined," Elon Musk's efforts to shut down the plane tracking autism kid. JD Salinger's isolation was a stock plot point in thinly-fictionalized form for decades, Field of Dreams being the most famous example. Even the Divine Emperor Augustus, upon being told that he was being told that they were praying to him in temples in the provinces as a God, shot back asking what to do if people asked him to heal their gout.

I would hate being famous. I was involved in a local political campaign, in such a way that random people asked me about it in casual conversation, and I hated not being able to stop talking to them for fear of hurting the campaign. I can't imagine having that every day for the rest of my life. Luckily I'm high end mediocre at everything.

Even the Divine Emperor Augustus, upon being told that he was being told that they were praying to him in temples in the provinces as a God, shot back asking what to do if people asked him to heal their gout.

I mean, dude named himself "godlike". I don't think he really had grounds to complain.

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