I had lunch with Uni Paul, and I said to him that I don't think I can ever be famous, because I've done and said too many stupid things that it'll come back to haunt me. He said that my comment reminded him that episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver where he discusses the lottery (YouTube link). Oh, wait, it wasn't that one, I don't know, Uni Paul said there was an episode of something where they talk about what you should do if you win the lottery, e.g. set up a trust, whether you should take the lump sum or get paid an annuity, but the thing is that your chances of winning the lottery are so small that if you put all that money you were going to spend on the lottery into a bank account instead, you'd end up ahead.
Well, OK, so my chances of being famous are smaller than my chances of winning the lottery, I'll accept that. And that's 100% OK for me, because being famous sounds scary. I'm not even talking about A-list celebrity famous, but even niche-famous people like Reddit's Unidan. He became incredibly popular on Reddit for answering questions on various biology topics, but then it turns out that he was using alternate accounts to upvote his own answers. Now he seems to be the butt of a heap of jokes.
The biggest thing that worries me is that people can turn on you so easily, and by being famous, everything you do is broadcast to a wider audience. I can't remember which celebrity it was who did an IAmA, but someone asked them a fairly innocuous question, like which do you like better, chocolate or vanilla? Their response was that they didn't want to answer that question and risk alienating half of their fans. I feel like that's such a sad way to live life. After high school, a lot of us will move on from the stage of life where you have to pretend to like or dislike things because that's what's "cool", but as a celebrity, I feel like you always have to be on the ball for what the public trend is at the moment. Zach Braff was loved by Reddit, but then he posted a tweet where he linked to something on 9GAG (which is the enemy of Reddit as apparently they take things from Reddit and other places, add their own watermark, and post it on a site with lots of ads) and he got so much crap over it. I recall there being many, many memes along the lines of, "You were supposed to be the one." Zach Braff is still loved, though it seems he's not that active on Reddit anymore (at the time of writing, his last post was 2 months ago).
Then you have things like what happened to Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, where their meltdowns were made quite public. I've said and done some stupid things in the moment, but usually there's an apology afterwards, and it's forgotten quite soon. Imagine people constantly bringing up mistakes you've made years after you've made them - even if you're a different person now. Although I guess that depends on how much you've learned your lesson. If you are constantly making the same mistakes over and over again, then perhaps someone needs to sit you down and remind you of all the things you've done. But if it was a one-time thing, then I don't think I could handle constantly having to justify myself for having done it, or explain that the people who were wronged have forgiven me, so why won't everyone else?
It's times like these that I'm glad I am in my little corner of the world. I don't know why I'm trying to mitigate potential fame-related disaster by limiting the amount of stupid things I say, because as Uni Paul put it, it's so unlikely to happen, but I guess it's good practice for going into a more senior role anyway, as I feel like sometimes my casual nature can be a bit unprofessional at times.
No comments:
Post a Comment