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Due to cancel culture and maybe even social media in general would you say its worth shooting for fame?
Back when I was a kid (when tv was the main screen) I guess I wanted to be famous. But I wanted to be famous because when I saw these muscians, actors and comedians I just thought wow their lives are easy and fun and obviously they're rich.
Now it seems like celebrities still have much more fun than the average person but it seems like to keep your position has gotten harder, especially the newer you are.
Is it still worth it?
It's always been this way about something.
Before, it's Marilyn monroe being all scandalous 'an shit, the Dixie Chicks failing to be sufficiently patriotic (sic. blood thirsty), taking the lords name in vain, whatever the fuck.
The cost of and benifit of fame is everyone watching you, so they can all shout at the some time when you violate the norm of the day.
Neither of these is comparable to modern cancelations.
How so?
I mean, shit; one case took them from being one of the top acts in their genre to not existing. Complete total nuked out of existance level. Not even Kanye got his shit rocked that hard.
And the other one became the zeitgeist definition of a sex goddess for four decades.
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This isn't true. The Dixie Chicks never disbanded. They never lost their record label; they released their tour albun after they made those remarks and it still hit #3 on the Country chart AND went platinum. They released two singles in 2003 and one in 2005, two of the three made the Country chart. They made a new studio album and they toured in 2006 (the controversy was in 2003, their previous tour was 2000). The group still exists today, though as @arjin_ferman notes, they changed their name because it was too unPC. Not "Chicks", but "Dixie". They're "The Chicks" nowadays.
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People not listening to your stuff anymore is not cancelation. Cancelation is trying to put obstacles to people listening to you.
Also, I thought the Dixie Chicks still exist, they just had to change their name because it was too unPC?
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For a certain type of person, I'm sure it is.
For me, the very thought of having to constantly police my opinions, to constantly watch out for backstabs, to worry about all the various attempts by others, even people you might trust, to exploit you and your fame for personal gain, to the point you can never really be certain if anyone authentically cares about you.
The one I think of a lot recently is Kanye West. Guy achieves true superstar status, is known for being extremely talented if a bit unhinged, billion+ dollar net worth, most projects he touches turn to gold, marries and knocks up one of the hottest women (in both the fame AND sexual attractiveness terms) on the planet, and then gets most of the above ripped away from him amidst mental breakdowns and abandonment by most of his 'friends' leaving him to various parasitic hangers-on who are desperate to grab their own strip of fame at his expense. All taking place very much in the public eye.
Let us just say I would not switch places with Kanye if given the choice.
Or the entire story of Michael Jackson, ye Gods.
I don't think I'd be comfortable having a life that is examined 24/7 by both rapid fans and haters and having to thus constantly be in 'performance' mode. The money would be great yet I wouldn't feel truly 'free' to spend it. In that sense, my role models are those types who achieve 'quiet' wealth. Like making tens of millions inventing some software that gets adopted as standard in some sub-industry that nobody ever things about, and owning a large, reclusive property somewhere in the mountains where nobody COULD bother you even if they wanted to.
Also if you're a singer, the thought of having to tour around the world is cool, but then realize that you have to perform (and practice!) the exact same songs dozens of times, likely thousands of times over the course of a career. For a born performer this might sound okay, but to me it sounds like a slow journey to insanity.
Money for Nothing and Your Chicks for Free.
I'd guess this depends on how you 'came up.' I get the sense that the so-called "Nepo babies" have it comparatively easy since your parents' connections can pave the road for you or, as the case may be, soften the landing if you fall.
I'd also guess that for those without existing connections, the number of 'gatekeepers' has proliferated making it way harder to advance to real fame. Maybe you don't have to sleep with a producer anymore (?) but you've got to get approved by a whole lot of intermediaries before you come anywhere near a big IP or studio that might actually push you through to the mainstream.
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For any given level of income/wealth, fame seems like a significant, net negative. That is, I would rather make $20 million from secretly winning the lottery than to get $20 million from having a runaway number one hit music album that made me famous. You have the downsides of stalkers, harassers, gold-diggers, cheats, etc. For every person with newfound respect for you, there are others trying to take you down a peg. And there isn't really any benefit. A person can reach peak happiness from being high status within his own family and social group. If you get so famous that you are awkward with your original social groups, and are in new higher status groups, then you haven't made yourself any better off.
Now, fame can be translated into money. So is it better to broke and waiting tables in Hollywood, or to get a huge break and become a famous actor? That is harder to say, but generally it seems to me that most modern social circles of the famous are very toxic and should be avoided.
You mean...a long-shot stock option play that pays out hugely, GME style?
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I've always felt that if I won the lottery, I'd find someone (ideally already rich) to claim the prize for me in exchange for a significant cut (probably up to 50%). Even having your name public as a lottery winner gets you a lot of attention you don't want.
You could probably get more than the prize value by selling your lottery ticket for cash, since that would allow someone who has a lot of illegitimate cash to turn that into legitimate taxable income.
I didn't think of that, and it's an interesting idea. But I don't know many folks who have millions of dollars that need to be laundered, and it's probably too risky to trust them to hold up their end of the deal. (Also, at that point I'd be left with millions of dollars of unaccounted for cash, which seems substantially less valuable than cash that doesn't need to be laundered.)
Though I guess the biggest issue with my original scheme is that it might expose the winnings to double taxation.
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That's fair. Mostly I just thought it was interesting that a market for "sell your lottery tickets" already exists and that winning lottery tickets have a cash value that is larger than the face value of their winnings.
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Many US states allow you to claim lottery prizes anonymously.
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This particular anecdote about Taylor Swift (who was already wealthy and privileged before chasing fame) basically convinced me, for all the money, being a pop star is not just inconvenient but undignified.
Imagine having to constantly cater like this constantly when it comes to your "art", worried about every change of the internet tides like a waiter perpetually dealing with a particularly difficult table.
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"I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job." - Bill Murray
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Almost all existing famous people are not cancelled - there are just a lot of famous people. if you made a list of 50 famous people, old or new, outside politics, and ask how many of them were materially harmed by cancellation - it has to be below 10% at least. And taboos you could lose your fame over if you crossed them are a historical universal.
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There are upsides. Back in the day, magazines and tabloid newspapers had a lot of influence over celebrities, because they controlled who had access to the general public. There was a lot of obsequiousness and moral compromise on the part of celebrities to promote themselves with magazines and tabloids. Today, with the internet, it's easy to keep in touch with fans via Twitter, Facebook, and so on, while things like Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok provide paths to fame without going through the traditional press.
If anything this is worse.
The most online celebs can make money without traditional media now, yes. But, in other ways, they have the worst of all worlds; they are directly subject to real-time feedback from fans and the parasocial relationship seems to lean way more in the direction of negativity than the sycophancy that might happen if they only had public interactions.
And, sometimes, they don't even get that much money for their troubles - Lindsay Ellis was driven into depression for an upper-middle class life.
Yes, A-list celebrities get to ignore (or try to ignore - see the Naomi Osaka case for the self-serving attempt to cut out the media using mental health claims) the traditional press more. But they hear from fans more and fans also see them more (previously they made deals with tabloids to keep a lot of this shit out) which increases the burden to conform.
Johnathan Majors is probably going to lose out on tens of millions due to a story that escaped before any of the traditional fixers and handlers could do their work. Decades ago it was more likely to become a story we hear about today "did you know Johnathan Majors assaulted someone 30 years ago and no one reported it?".
But I'd still like to be rich and famous though.
I'm not sure that this is a good reflection of tabloid-celebrity relationships in the past, which seemed to be extremely abusive in some cases, and always with the threat of abusive intrusion in the background.
However, I don't dispute that the situation is bad for celebrities. Personally, I wouldn't mind being rich, but I would happily do without the fame.
I didn't mean sycophancy amongst the tabloids but the fans who "drag" online celebs on Twitter.
I think a lot of people on Twitter are way more toxic to their favorite Breadtuber or streamer than they'd be if they met them.
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