Virality

Time was, if you were a celebrity or a public figure, you were known for something.  All anybody knew of you and your life was related to whatever you were known for.  Now this post isn't about being famous for nothing in particular, although that in itself is a topic of discussion to be had, we'll save it for another day.  Instead I'd like to focus on the extent to which we the general public get to know you.

In decades past, before the Internet, although I think even in the early days of the Internet, when you were famous the only point of "access" to you as a person that we the general public got to use was your work.  If you were a singer we got to hear you sing, we bought your albums, we went to your concerts, occasionally we saw an interview you gave in mainstream media outlets which were limited in number.  If you were really massive then there would have been a following that created a fan club dedicated to you with a handful of stalkers that found out everything they could and disseminated that information.  Point being what little we knew about you was rationed and tightly controlled.

Fast forward to the modern day and we live in a different world.  The world has become a smaller place.  It's a lot easier to access you as a person than it once was.  You can be anywhere in the world, as can we, and we can find out where you are, what you are doing, and depending on how vocal you are online, what you are thinking.

You may have noticed throughout this post I've been using the pronoun "you" - that's no accident.  Andy Warhol once said that everyone would have their fifteen minutes of fame in the future.  I think that moment has come and gone and we have been left with a society where everyone isn't content with the fifteen minutes they've already had, instead they want more.  There's the perception that the fame they had wasn't big enough - if it ever can be.

The reality we now live in is one where "fame" has been devalued to the point where everyone is famous because as long as someone knows your name then you're famous, even if there are literally only a handful of people who know who you are, you are famous.  The question has evolved from one of how do I become famous to one of how do I become more famous than I already am?  Personally fame isn't something I want, I'd rather have the fortune without the fame.  That's not going to happen any time soon in my view for the simple reason it takes a lot of work, none of which I have put any effort into.

Regardless, the point remains that the Internet has been instrumental in providing everyone who has access to it, with a platform on which they can stand and voice their opinions or share their talents with the world - or lack thereof.  Judgement aside, there are many people with incredible talent that showcase it online, but the sad reality is that for the vast majority of them, no matter how much effort they put into promoting themselves, they are destined to remain in obscurity.  There is no secret formula that you can follow to become famous, there's no one-stop-shop, or hard and fast rule that you can turn to in order to reach those heights.  Movie studios spend millions on their franchises, yet the run away success of a franchise isn't something that can be easily repeated.  If it was then every movie they released would be a hit.  The reality is that there is an unknown element to everything in life that determines virality - the factor that determines whether you go viral and become known by everyone and his dog, or whether you fizzle out into the darkness like a firework, a flash of brightness filled with colour for a moment before it is gone, giving way to perpetual darkness.