I don’t want to be famous on the Internet anymore
It may surprise you to hear that ever since the tender ages of 15 to 16 (2004 to 2005) I have tried to “become famous” on the Internet.
Why? I don’t know. I just wanted to. I wanted people to hear my opinions on the Internet and praise me for sharing them.
I tried pretty much everything: blogging, YouTube, social media, you name it. Content that I made ranged from commentary, to news, gaming, music, cooking, etc. All my projects “failed” (or rather, they didn’t grow as fast as I expected them to, so I gave up). I’m talking hundreds of attempts.
Then in late 2023, I made a New Year’s resolution for 2024 to fully delete Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, 9gag, and Reddit. My resolution worked and it changed my life.
A lot of people in my social circle have since begun telling me that I have this talent or that talent, and that I should monitize it by growing a following on social media. I have ignored all of them, despite spending a good 20 years trying to do exactly that. Here’s why:
- The first and foremost reason is that I don’t want to wrestle with algorithms and follow trends. It seems that it’s almost impossible to grow a following on the Internet these days without doing that, unless you get very lucky growing a following organically, which only very few people do. Chasing algorithms and trends is not fun, and if I’m not having fun with what do with my spare time, then I don’t want to do it at all. I’ve also come to hate creating video content for some reason. I just find it tedious.
- Over the years, I feel that I have become afraid of getting lucky and becoming successful. It seems to me that the people who live off creating content for the Internet, don’t ever get a break. Their followers demand a steady stream of content, and if you don’t keep vying for their attention, then they’ll go give it to someone else and you’re suddenly left without any income. I know that many creators work seven days a week.
- This leads me to the problem of “attention”: I don’t want to compete for people’s attention anymore. I hate the whole concept of the “attention economy”. It’s so insane to me that the survival of so many hundreds of million of people depends of how much human attention their work gets. And I’m not talking just about social media now, but entertainment in general. There are only so many humans, and they have a limited amount of time during the day that they can offer attention to entertainment to (be it social media, TV, movies, music, games, you name it). I think that these business models are not sustainable. There are also too many “things” for us to pay attention to these days and I feel like it’s driving us all insane. I’ve been intentionally trying to pay attention to as few things as I possibly can for a while now and it has significantly reduces my anxiety and FOMO. It’s given me a lot of peace. So, I don’t want to contribute to this “evil” myself.
- The Internet has become a dangerous place. Even people who publish otherwise completely innocuous content get sometimes harassed or doxxed. Streamers get SWATed. Women get the brunt of it (I think) because sexual harassment and deepfake porn has become so prevalent, and they can do nothing to protect themselves. Everything you publish anywhere can and will be used against you (including by potential employers). Being “unknown” and “staying in your lane” seems to be about the only way that you can stay safe these days.
- I also just don’t want the endless scrutiny that comes with fame, the expectation that my personality can’t change, that opinions can’t be nuanced, and that I squarely fit into either the “blue box” or the “red box” (in whatever aspect, since every field of opinion these days seems to be thoroughly divided in half). Whatever opinion people share online, even the most trivial, can and will be misinterpreted by bad faith actors and trolls to just mentally crush you.
- I have come to think that dying in anonymity, while leaving no legacy behind, is actually not a bad thing. I mean, it’s a “natural” thing. It’s what happens to the vast majority of humans anyway. Why should I be so afraid of that? Afraid of living my life in the peace of anonymity? There are plenty of ways to live a meaningful life that don’t involve becoming famous on the Internet, or famous at all.
I regret arriving at this conclusion now only. I had so much trouble in my short and fruitless life because of stuff that I posted on the Internet (talking about Facebook and my social circle more specifically). I could have avoided all of that. I could also not have wasted so much time entertaining ideas of online grandeur, blowing away countless hours of my pitiful existence on projects that never amounted to anything, and instead, gotten an education, so that I wouldn’t be living in poverty now.
Oh, well. It is what it is. Better learning now than never.
I’m not sure why I ever wanted to be famous on the Internet to begin with, or what made me think that there’s any inherent worth in getting online praise just for sharing my mediocre opinions. Maybe I’m mentally ill. Maybe I’m traumatized. Maybe this is something that I should consult a therapist over. However, what I do know, is that I’m done with pursuing online fame.
I think that the Internet as it is today, flipped some sort of switch in people’s brain (including mine), which convinced us that it is normal to chase fame because the means to get there are so readily available. I don’t know how the Internet could have been designed differently to prevent this, but “giving a voice to everyone” was, in hindsight, maybe a badly implemented idea.
I’d be surprised to hear that any of you here have been trying to become famous on the Internet, but if you have, then I’d like to hear about your experience, and your opinions on this topic in general.
I have known several people who have achieved varying degrees of internet fame (or, in one case, notoriety) at different points. Probably the most consistently pseudo internet-famous person I know is my mother — which is kind of funny because she doesn't meaningfully create content or market herself. She's just extremely socially active both online and offline, follows lots (and lots and lots) of people, shares and comments on whatever strikes her fancy, and sometimes makes her own things (namely memes) for her friends' enjoyment. Whenever something she makes goes viral, no matter how innocuous it is, she inevitably gets pummeled with aggressive, unwanted attention from people far outside her vast social circle, and she really hates it. It makes her cry and keeps her up at night with stress. Over the years, she has increasingly made her online presence as private as possible to limit this, so she's much less internet-famous now than she used to be.
Whatever instinct I might otherwise have for internet fame, observing firsthand how it actually manifests surely cured me.
This is a great (albeit sad) example of what I wrote about.
I was internet famous — for a few months back in 2009. It crossed over into real media, too. Mostly tech, but some mainstream news sites as well.
I wasn't seeking internet fame per se. The way that all started is partly laid out in the wiki article and can be somewhat gleaned from the various sources that covered it, but not completely.
It started as a conversation about Glenn¹ Beck because at the time, he had just endorsed Sarah Palin's candidacy². In a comment, here, on Fark.com, a user - oldweevil - posted the question:
I first posted in that thread here, and because I thought it was funny, noted that I had registered the domain here.
That is actually how it got started.
The premise of all of this came from Gilbert Gottfried's roast of Bob Saget, where he repeatedly kept saying that the rumours that "Bob Saget raped and killed a girl in 1990" were not true, eventually ending by saying "And if you have any evidence that Bob Saget raped and killed a girl in 1990, go to the police!"
Glenn Beck had interviewed the first sitting member of Congress who was muslim: Representative Keith Ellison. During the interview, Beck basically said "Now, I'm not saying this, but some of my listeners will wonder: Are you working for our enemies?"
============ I must off to dialysis, I will edit this this afternoon when I get back to continue the story...
edit: Para continuar en inglés, por favor marque una
That really irked me. I already disliked Beck and thought he was a buffoon, but that was just another layer of insult. So when he was in the news for endorsing Sarah Palin and I ran across that comment in the thread. It's hard to believe for some of the younger folks, but even back then things had really started going super-partisan and shit.
It was so cathartic to joke in that thread. And so I was inspired to create the site.
I threw up some content on there. I think I copied/pasted some of the comments people had made and either linked to them or at least attributed to them.
Oh, damn! It occurred to me for the very first time in my life to check the wayback machine, and it has it! Ahhh, I've missed that design.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090904212159/http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/
And a later snapshot:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090913072813/http://www.glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com:80/
Ahh… takes me right back.
So yeah. I threw some crap up there just to have something and it took off.
Now, when I'd registered the domain, I put fake contact info in there. I really didn't want people to have my address. At that time, "daychilde" was anonymous everywhere. But I am the only daychilde on the internet, soooo if I got doxed, people could look me up.
So meanwhile, Beck's lawyers demanded my contact info from the registrar, which was Namecheap. I have now forgotten the precise order of events, but they sent me a notification that lawyers had demanded my contact information. They also at some point took my domain offline due to the fake contact information.
I was faced with shutting down or putting my real name out there.
I ended up doing the latter.
So the lawyers overnighted me a threatening packet via fed-ex. I started asking around the internet for lawyers.
I was put in touch with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and I was also contacted directly by Marc Randazza. Both volunteered to help, so I had to pick one. I talked with both and Marc seemed more personable and likely to work with me. EFF, alas, said I would regret going with Marc and that he would lose me the case. I really was not impressed with their attitude.
And thankfully I completely lucked out, because Marc is what made the site absolutely go much more viral.
He cautioned me from giving interviews, and I had to listen because I ddn't want to lose the house. lol. So I didn't get to talk to media while he did get that fun. But I still did have a lot of fun with it.
As it started to spread, people were posting it everywhere. Fark had started to come down against it appearing everywhere. I posted something in a thread somewhere trying to help get people to stop posting it, and got caught up for having posted about it even though I was trying to help - and I got a one week banfrom Fark.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine was a redditor, and they let me know someone had made a post over on reddit asking for the person behind the site to come do an AMA. So I signed up for reddit and did one. lol. I ended up sticking around reddit after I was pointed to RES, which made life there bearable. heh
Well, things progressed. The WIPO case worked its way through, and incensed conservatives tried to find me so they could threaten me. We found one forum where they were discussing the website. I decided to throw people off. Acorn was in the news at the time as an org accused (pretty falsely as I recall) of fraudulently signing up people to vote. So I put some references to acorn in the code. And then in a fit of genius, if I do say so myself, I went to acord.org and got their 404 page. I copied the code and made a custom 404 page on my server with that code. Then I "made a typo" in a link on the page so it loaded the custom 404. When we checked back on that forum, they were going on and on and on about how this attack was by Acorn! lololololol.
So finally, we won. I was takling to Marc about what the lawyers might do now that they lost - would they sue me in court for defamation? Well, maybe. Hard to predit. If they did, would we win? Honestly, he said, he wasn't sure. He was confident the chances were really really good, but it's rare that things are guaranteed.....
So I was worried - we inherited our house from my wife's parents, and if I lost a case, I'd lose that house³. Talked to figure out what to do, and Marc suggested we give them the domain. He wrote the infamous letter, which I signed and sent them.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Eiland-Hall_letter_to_Glenn_Beck
It amuses me that after I printed and signed the letter, I scanned it in. So the image on that page is from me. lol.
I maled them the letter but also posted it, of course. And while the site had died down a bit and made news when we won, it made another full round of the news after that latter. lol.
The only other notable story I forgot to include in the middle of it was that on that second archive page, you can see a (214) number - Dallas, TX. I lived in Panama City, FL, but signed up for a VOIP to post to collect funny voicemails to post. But I thought - I livedin Dallas, why not get a Dallas number to throw off people on where I lived? lol.
Most of the voicemails were supportive. Only one was truly threatening - a guy who told me in no uncertain terms that he would find me and shove a baseball bat up my ass. He went on to describe it in a bit of disturbing detail. I almost suspected it was a fetish or something.
But caller ID is a thing, and he was not bright enough to block it, so I sent it to my lawyer. He called the guy and let him know we knew who he was, and I never heard anything further. lol
It was a fun experience. And I did, indeed, not make a single dime. In hindsight, I kinda regret that. I've always been poor thanks to ADHD, and it would have been nice to benefit from that opportunity. But I can at least say with pride: I spent money on the thing. lol
¹ in some small way, I hate that I know the proper spelling of his name. heh
² ahh, such innocent days while we were still merely on the journey towards fascism…
³ but it's okay, Hurricane Michael did that in 2018. Yay.
Wow. This wild. And that you’re here on Tildes and all. I don’t even know what to comment.
Well, for one, I'm a normal human being.
Well. That's not quite true. I'm neurospicy thanks to ADHD.
But otherwise, pretty normal. :)
I also finished the comment up there now.
It took me a long time to get used to folks treating me as some sort of amazing person. I will admit that I bring it up maybe once per year - maybe less these past years - just because it is something cool I got to be a part of and do. I do like the ego boost. But mostly, it's fun that it happened, and I love sharing that stuff because it's fun, not to stroke my own ego (for the most part).
Really, many people have done way more awesome stuff than I did. And anyone could have stepped up and did what I did. I didn't even have the original idea, I just ran with the joke and ended up with a lot of attention.
I do wish I could have turned that into a political movement against the rise of fascism. But I didn't know how to go viral again - and when I won, I was exhausted by the stress. So I took a break - and then it was gone. I tried to revive the project and go after others, but nothing took off. Which is okay.
So, after about 3.5 months of fun and stress, back to normal life for me. lol
Haha. Never heard that one before. 😂 Love it.
Absolutely not mine, but I absolutely stole it when I heard it. hehe
It's definitely become a LOT less "fun" to try and be famous on the internet. Not only is there so much more leg work you have to do to even remotely have a chance to make it, most of it is completely unpalatable to anyone who isn't either a complete narcissist or sociopath haha. For people like Youtubers and Streamers they need to not only make the content in the first place, they then need to edit it down into multiple formats for posting on other platforms like TikTok, Instagram reels, Youtube shorts, etc. If you don't do this you're already 10 steps behind every other grinder out there.
Not only that, pretty much every niche out there is heavily oversaturated so its pretty much impossible to stand out from the crowd of people who are, let's be honest, much younger and more hungry for the grind than you are. It takes an incredible amount of energy to come home from a long day of work, and then decide you want to put even more hours into another job that pays basically nothing and often takes months of doing stuff until it gets any attention.
I also agree with pretty much all of the points you mentioned in your post as well.
That’s an interesting way to put it. I agree. lol
Yes. 100%. It’s worse than a full-time job.
I was feeling a bit annoyed with the whole system when I wrote that haha, it may be a bit exeragerating, but you do really have to be a certain kinda person to go through all those hoops to try and become an internet celeb these days.
Very well written. I understand your frustration with the way things are currently.
I am nowhere internet famous but I have had random hits time to time. I was featured on the front page of a prominent (regional) US news paper, my posts were on HN frontpage and I one of my projects was the top r/programming post for that year. While it was fun working in the trenches and trying to figure it out, the temporary fame doesn't even compare to the joys I have had with my friends and family.
I recently spent a month working hard on a project and shared it to the wider public, and the reaction was... crickets. I don't mind the lack of kudos, but what hurts is the lack of feedback that could help me do better.
The modern Tiktokification/Instagrammification of everything has destroyed the soul of the internet. People have become so desensitized and it is sad to see "AI" dominate the front pages of all the tech sites. I don't even want to be famous, I just want to share my content with like minded people and maybe have a nice set of internet-friends like in the olden days.
As for me, I'll continue blogging and writing down my experiences for myself. That's the only act of rebellion I can do.
Yeah, I’m generally of the opinion that more users means more problems, but not having any users for a project that you’ve put some time into (which is the usual result) isn’t great either.
There are different kinds of attention. A few upvotes is better than dead silence. Support from a few friends or advice from experts in the relevant field would be great.
It's definitely an apprehension I have. I don't really want any future contributions I make to "blow up" and I'm suddenly the center of attention. But I also want to make useful contributions and getting zero feedback feels bad too. It's a careful balance that you really have no control over.
I don't mind lack of upvotes in this case because I created this project to solve a personal pain. The feedback from the fellow hackers aware of the problem was overwhelmingly positive.
@skybrian Perhaps I should share it here on Tildes and see if y'all like it?
Sure, why not? This is a small forum, so if it’s a specialized project then you might not get much response, but might as well try.
As luck would have it, my post is now on the HN front page. I’ll post it here soon.
This.
We have a few members here on Tildes who are/were internet famous for their contributions to the internet / HN / Reddit, building mod tools, building very popular apps, moderating very large communities, being the resident expert for a variety of things. We're richer for the reasons for their fame collectively, rather than directly because they're famous.
Have you ever read an essay by C S Lewis called The Inner Ring, which was a matriculation speech given to young men about your age. Here, he speaks as an middle aged moralist and a humanist, and I think, give good advice.
You're probably not in the market for more advice. :) but I just want to point out that you're very very young, and you're healthy and have gained a lot of experience that are actually transferable, and also that you are getting away from the pursuit of fame. Congratulations. This is going to be the next phase where you do greater things and have greater enjoyment and success.
ooh Thanks for sharing that text. I always enjoy reading something from C.S. Lewis. 😊
What do you mean by “young” though? I’m 35. I’m basically with one foot in the grave. 💀
(I’m kidding. Somewhat.)
Haha, 35 is young. So young.
I always remember the surgeon & team talking to us after one of mom's brain surgery: she's young, and she's a fighter, they said. I felt like, what, moms aren't young, young is 25 and under! But they were right.
After hanging out with older people more, seeing mom's decline, and being in a hospice environment, 60s is young. If you're 70, 80, 90 and you can still sit up and use the washroom by yourself and lift a spoon to your own mouth, you're young.
Wow, first I just want to say that I'm consistently impressed by your writing style and thoroughness, and thoughtfulness, to be honest.
I have a lot of thoughts, but want to address the lowest hanging fruit.
I think you tried or wanted to become internet famous, because praise and attention are a huge part of our development as humans, especially as children when we are learning a lot, but also as part of the rest of our lives. It is normal and natural and healthy, to seek praise and attention, and to want to be liked by others. We are social animals.
People have aspired for a long time for professions that garner attention, there has always been an allure amongst children to want to become famous, for example, it just has shifted to including an internet personality, instead of being relegated to just famous athletes or movie stars.
I think there's something to be said that you may not have come to the conclusion you have, without going through the process you did. Whether that was worth it or not, perhaps is not a productive conversation for the scope of this post or where you are in your life right now. I hear so much pain and regret in your words regarding your lack of education. I don't know your situation, but I hope you know that you appear very intelligent and capable to me. I know that people can hit a "paper ceiling" without a degree, perhaps that is your situation, and I'm truly sorry that is your current situation.
I will say that you wonder about therapy. I think you could at least consider therapy (individual or group). Poverty trauma is a real thing, iirc, you also moved and live in a foreign country where you lack community, and moving is a traumatic experience. If therapy is not accessible to you, I can try to recommend you some self - help books, or you can look yourself as well, but I encourage at least trying professional help at least once.
Lastly, I get the impression from you that you like to teach people things or share things with people that you find interesting. And I think your endeavor to share your knowledge is a testament to your desire to inspire curiosity in others, which I, personally, find worthy of praise.
True that.
It is indeed. It’s been like this for years on end now and it drives me insane. Thanks you for the sympathy. It truly means a lot to me. Most of the time I just get told “what to do to fix it”, which my current circumstances simply don’t allow.
Thank you so much for your kind words. They really mean a lot to me.
100% give therapy a shot, it's part of what led me through some of almost the same feelings and concerns and suspicions and shame about myself & how I was misusing or underutilizing my interests/free time/talents/abilities. I also (at the risk of further being "the ADHD guy" but worth it lol) went to the doc & got on some good meds for ADHD & it literally changed my life—turns out most people in that category have trouble finishing tasks, focusing, etc, but some luckier/unluckier individuals almost can't - stop - doing the tasks, to their detriment; I don't feel nearly as bad about not maximizing my minutes now, because I can just enjoy them.
Mainly good work getting this out there, hope you find some end-point you're happy with! In the past I would have said "oh me too, we should make a webcomic" but now I know that really I would kind of hate that haha, so it is possible : )
Nah we got a lot of ADHD "guys" here. Join us, we were going to have cookies but I forgot to pick them up because they weren't on the list and I got too hyper focused on a Wikipedia rabbit hole to remember to go to the store.
I’m pretty sure the real barrier for our ADHD club is that only one person can speak at any given convention due to painful over explanation and tangents.
Well the real barrier is that we all forgot to RSVP. We meant to though!
yeah, most of the work I've read by experts in ADHD have pointed out that the "attention deficit" portion is really a misnomer -- its an attention regulation issue, and that can result in both failing to focus and hyperfocus, depending on the specific individual and task in question.
I like your “attention regulation” phrase.
Too many times I have said in my head, “it’s not that I can’t pay attention. I just don’t care about what you’re trying to get me to pay attention to.”
I can't take credit for the phrase myself, as I borrowed it from books I read after I got diagnosed, but I agree that it's a very smart way to refer to it.
I hear ya, we are addicted to problem solving :DDDDDD
This context helps me make even more sense of your situation. I'm not at all surprised that you would find joy or be attracted to entrepreneurial activities that rely on self-starter attitudes. I think when someone is as capable and talented as you are, with the realization that most certificates/degrees are arbitrary external validation, it is natural they would just "do things themselves", like self-publish, self-create. I wouldn't be surprised if you have considered traditional self-employment as well.
Alas, I am getting ahead of myself and probably doing too much armchair psychologizing.
I'm glad you're here, and if you're looking for advice, I have found that the healthiest way for me to balance my desire to create with my upsetness at not being received the way I want, is to create things for myself, with the intention that they are for me; if other people like it, then that's a bonus, but ultimately it's for me. Learning that line helps me take blows when I share and don't get what I want, but allows me to really be unfiltered and authentic as well.
👀
Haha. You got it 100% right though! 😄 Maybe you should become an actual psychologist.
Truly, if I reasonably could, I would prefer to be my own boss, even if that meant that I would have to work longer hours.
To add to this: @crissequeira you should maybe try to do something with this talent... Maybe start a blog or something!
Haha! Nice one. 😂
I see what you did there! 😉
I almost typed, “this comment is really insensitive, even if you meant it in a good way, this is like suggesting to someone who has a drinking problem and hates throwing up that they could drink X drink to try not throwing up” — ya got me good.
Hehehe, good, it's not easy being funny in text (especially amongst strangers), but it seems all relevant parties got it (op, parent and innocent bystanders a like)!
Phew!! I did good :)
I want to echo your feelings! There’s nothing inherently mentally ill about wanting to be successful or popular or famous. There’s also something valuable in making a sincere effort towards goals. Is it so different from a local band trying to go big or an artist publishing their work?
It’s three hundred percent foreign, to me, as someone who specifically avoids attention, but that’s undoubtedly a valid and important part of your life, even (or especially!) if you’ve moved past it.
Perhaps if you have a natural talent to share there might be more local and less public avenues to build community.
I don't have much to add to this. You're definitely not alone.
This tweet is over a decade old now but I still think of it whenever I ponder if putting myself out onto the one-big-room-humanity-screams-into (the internet) is worth it.
Maybe it's time to start looking into getting some succulents?
Haha. No. I’m sure I’d find a way to kill even those. 😂
thank you for the thoughtful post. i think the cult of celebrity and fame is quite bad for society, for many of the reasons you point out. what i wanted to add to it, though, is that for me, the worst thing about it all is that it makes it unsafe and undesirable to do that which is very human, and is one of the best things about being human: to create and to share yourself with others. like so many things in our society, it seems to be a corruption of a relatively pure human drive that i suppose springs from a mix of capitalism and how we are simply not built to handle interacting with such a large and complex society.
in my experience, i do not wish to be famous at all, i am afraid of it, even. yet i do have a strong internal drive to make art in various forms, and to share it with others. i did not do this for so long because i do not want fame or any of the negative effects of attention. but i guess i do want... to make an impression, to get feedback sometimes, to collaborate, to communicate things, to participate in community with others artists - and these all require sharing. i have started to share in recent years, and i suppose the trick was to do it in ways that are comfortable, playing music locally, writing pseudonymously online and in local zines or print publications, talking with folks on platforms like Tildes, not relying on art for income... that kind of thing.
I've been "famous on the internet" a few times. but it's never satisfied my underlying depression.
I'm not sure what else to say except that.
External validation provides a cheap dopamine release, which is pretty easy to find online. It's only ever skin deep though so if you make that your whole thing you end up having a very shallow opinion of yourself.
My face made the front page of Reddit over 11 years ago when I was in high school (before they made the upvotes change so it was a big deal back then lol). It was a dumb joke I was making with my friends and we thought it would be funny and ended up posting it. Most comments were really nice and laughed along with us but there were definitely a lot of really mean comments! That's when I learned that the opinions of people online aren't worth shit basically.
I'm a somewhat public person. I get interviewed for news stories multiple times a year. I'm known in my industry. I get recognized by folks in my sector several times a month.
I completely dissociate that from any online activities. I have a minimal to almost non-existent presence online. No Linked-In, public Facebook profile and so on.
That has a lot of value to me.
I try not to have too many online accounts with public activity that are linked to the same unique username. I've had roles on some websites that lead to folks noticing a username. That's not something I like.
Online, I prefer things getting evaluated based on merit. That you can't tell if it's a 16-year old or a 60-year old posting.
As many others say in comments: Getting recognized or having folks think they know you or things about you or can expect something from you can be exhausting.
I'm extremely privileged. This is one minor inconvenience that comes with the package.
On legacy, not sure I'll ever forget this quote Mike Tyson dropped on a 13 y.o. interviewer.
https://youtu.be/0jA3fKMiKMs
Some folks may find that depressing, but it can be a freeing mindset. Before this, he talks about finding happiness with friends and family, but that it can be something different for others. So fuck legacy, live the life you currently have, love your friends and family, be kind to one another.
Dang. That bit me in the ear. Pun intended. Great quote. Thanks for sharing.
I think of what you wrote every time I seen another 20 something building out a campervan and documenting the "joy" of their "carefree" life. And then I see a REAL vlogger posting about how many hours of highly posed and essentially fake video they had to create and edit and post in order to make, wait for it, $600 on youtube. These were people with a huge following who documented their travel for years to build up their following. And they beat their brains out for a measly 600 hundred bucks a video. There is no joy in that slog.
Its just not worth it, but when my family member asks his Grade 8 students what kind of career they're hoping for, a shocking number of them say they want to be influencers or streamers. Dear lord, its hard to imagine what kind of a sad state of affairs we're in when kids think getting clicks and likes is a worthy life goal.
oof Don’t even get me started on the #VanLife content. It’s one of the primary reasons why I deleted TikTok. I just couldn’t deal with the FOMO anymore. It was literally making me angry that I couldn’t have that life, even though I knew it was almost certainly at least partly fake. How many people can really afford the time and money to convert an old car into a camper and then make enough money working remotely to live on the road? And is it even as glamorous as portrayed? It makes me feel such intense love-hate emotions when I see such content. lol
I've gone through a similar change, but I think much of it is also a change in the internet. Growing up, the internet felt like a distinct community. I was in IRC chat rooms, specific forums; being "internet famous" was a tongue-in cheek joke, but it was also being popular and well regarded in the community I most identified with. Everyone wants to be the cool kid in their school, right?
Similarly, the internet was way more accessible. Everything that is twitch/live streaming today was "post a 'Let's Play' video to the SomethingAwful forums of literally just you playing a game." Most podcasts were just a few friends with microphones, before podcasts ate talk radio in its entirety. The few dinosaurs that held out have adapted with the times and are now more like production companies with a familiar figurehead sitting on top.
But beyond the much wider moats and barriers to entry, being 'internet famous' is just now being 'famous'. Not only have I outgrown wanting to be the cool kid in school, but the school is effectively dead, the community grown and homogenized to the point where it's now just 'all people'. I miss those days, but I've also had to find newer, smaller communities to replace the internet, and putting my time into them is much more rewarding.
I think this is worth calling out, as sometimes it seems to get lost just how kinda truly "small" the Internet was before 2007, and that "Internet famous" back then meant you had the attention of maybe a few hundred or a few thousand people at most. The term was used as a perjorative as often as not.
I was very minorly "Internet famous" in the mid 2000s--specifically by the above definition, by which I mean I had a mildly popular Livejournal, a webcomic I did in my spare time that had maybe at most 2000 readers a month and was endorsed by more popular webcomic artists of the time, and a few Goldmined story threads on Something Awful. Minorly famous just meant being largely recognized and accepted in communities I wanted to be accepted into, as you say.
And it was honestly nice, as it's always nice to have people who make things you like, like things you make. But it didn't take anywhere near the level of effort it takes now to even just get started. And the audience was trivially small, virtually nonexistent by today's standards. Money was absolutely nonexistent, though the webcomic did break even on its hosting costs via the one ad slot I had on it, heh. I don't think OP would've been happy with it.
Anyway, I compare that to my wife, who is someone you could call "somewhat famous" and has to put constant effort into her social media presence as an adjunct requirement to her creative career. She spends about 50% of her working time maintaining it, posting content across most major outlets, and that's not her actual job--it's just promotion for the actual work. And she kinda hates it. She has to (or at least feels compelled to) post something every day if not multiple times, take interviews, guest on podcasts, constantly shoot photos on her phone to reserve for future content, etc. Fending off trolls and creeps and the other perils of Being a Woman on the Internet takes a lot of calories. She has it better than many people who make a living from the Internet do, but she'd walk away from it in a heartbeat if she could.
These days and for a long time now, I've been the opposite. Since starting my career in the late 2000s it benefits me greatly to have as minimal an online presence as possible. Like to the point that I've asked my wife to never share photos or speak about me in more than passing in her social media work. I'm not a superspy or anything, I just value "security through obscurity". I do miss the old days as well, but despite my desire for obscurity I find I can't ever seem to shut up, hah, so it's been great to recently find smaller, more niche communities like this one to be able to get a little of that feeling back. And looking at the mainstream Internet the way it is and works now, I can't imagine wanting that much attention if it didn't take a metric shit-ton of work to get and keep it. Seems like a nightmare.
I do miss the free wellspring of trust that existed back then, growing up it felt like if you had something novel or interesting to show the world, that was enough--we were all so freely giving of our attention and could assume the people on the other side were real people.
It seems like social media figured out how to transform it all into a saleable commodity--I sometimes wonder if this is how commoners felt during the medieval 'enclosure' movement.
I’ve thought for a long while that just enjoying a hobby/skill/talent is enough. You don’t have to monetize it in order for it to add value to your life, and the pressure these days saying that money is the only value worth considering is insane. I’m sure it works for some people but that shouldn’t become the accepted model of how to live.
I really enjoy 3D printing and design, and I’m really good at it (if I say so myself). Especially multiprocess projects. I make stuff for myself or give things away to friends and family, but I feel like I die a little every time someone suggests I should start selling things online or start a YouTube channel (like there aren’t enough already).
So true.
I've experienced a little bit of this through my GIFs, and the only fun part for me has been the people I've been able to meet and the friends I've made. The rest isn't worth it.