Fame and why it seems so attainable

Hey there internet. So, it's time to talk about that thing. That thing everyone kinda wants but also doesn't. That thing that is really very relative when you think about it, but is simultaneously incredibly universal. I'm talking about FAME! The most commonly referred to form of this being in showbiz, baby. I'm probably going to be talking about that kind of fame more than anything, simply for that reason; it's the form most commonly seen, most examined, most judged the hell out of. I'm not talking about the TV show or the terrible, terrible movie "Fame", just to clear up any misunderstanding. Why am I discussing this? I'm bored, I think it's interesting, I want to self-indulgently examine something to sound smart, I'm procrastinating; Choose one. This is my blog, I can write what I want.

So, what is fame? It's not simply being known, everyone's known by someone. Is it being known by a lot of people? Again, that's relative. Is it much different to infamy? TO GOOGLE!

fame  

Noun 1. The condition of being known or talked about by people other than your mother to her book club friends. eg. When your artwork goes on other peoples' fridges.

Huh. Thanks Google, that was... helpful? Not that I doubt your vast knowledge or anything, great master of the internet, but I might just check dictionary.com quickly...

Fame
Noun
1. The phenomenon where you have significantly more twitter followers than followees

2. When people are surprised that you perform mundane tasks such as buy groceries, "just like everyone else"

...... I'm so sorry I ever doubted you Google. I meant no disrespect.

Now that's out of the way, let's talk about fame. We've all been through that phase (and a lot of us are still in that phase) where we are convinced that one day we will be famous. Regardless of where we live or how much talent or skill we have in reality, we live in this constant state of hopefullness that we will one day "make it". Why is this? I personally blame two things.

Hollywood and human nature (they're effectively the same entities at this point)

I'll start with the first, It's gonna be shorter and it's a bi-product of the latter anyway.

Look at him!
He's buying food like the plebians!

Hollywood is big on the idea of "follow your dreams and you'll make it big". Of course they are. The more people believe this, the more people will move to LA with nothing but a pocket full of cash and a dream, desperate for glory and fame. The bigshots need this desperation, it makes work cheaper. This attitude benefits the machine so of course they're gonna keep spewing out the same old message. It's a cliché for a reason, folks, can't deny it. Hollywood is particularly keen on their stories about people who do make it big, especially when they're true. People like Justin Beiber (I'm using the most repulsive case of this for effect) was "discovered" busking in his hometown in Canada and now he's a super-ultra-mega-chocolate-coated-gee-whilickers-batman-all-the-screaming-jailbait-following-him-around-he's-practically-jesus-get-the-angels-from-"dogma"-in-here-STAR! People lap that shit up. And you hear about this so much, real cases, fictional cases, one hit wonders, two hit wonders, that one guy who's in everything wonders. It's in song lyrics, movies, tv shows (the more realistic side is shown through Penny in the always awesome "Big Bang Theory", the smalltown girl who moved to LA to become an actress... and got nowhere)- You can't help but be hopeful. It's in your programming.

Which brings us to my next point. The human nature, how things work, gosh, I'm so smart, listen to my bullshitty science stuff, section of this post. This ties in a fair bit with my "knowing people I don't know" post a while back. We. Are. Tiny. Absolutely teeny-weeny.

We as humans are totally incapable of comprehending our infinite smallness. Would you be able to draw 7 billion dots on a page? Probably not. Not even close. Knowing my attention span I'd get to around 120 before fecking off to do something marginally more important. Think about all the famous people you've heard of. There seems to be a lot of them, right? People you know from movies, Tv shows, Youtube, The internet in general, comedians, your favourite bands and singers; that's a lot of people. Averaged out that's what? Maybe a thousand? Fifteen hundred? That's a good lot of people, probably a lot more people than you are, realistically, going to make an impact on in your life. You have, what, 500 Facebook friends? Let's reduce that down to 100 for the people you could actually talk to, and down to 50 for the people you could hang out with. Then down to 10 or 20 for close friends. You have very little reference for what a lot of people really truly is.

If you squint reeeeally hard, you can see people waving. 

But I'm getting side tracked. Back to famous people. We said you'd heard of about fifteen hundred famous people. Now, because that's a big number, it's seems realistic enough to assume that you could, someday, be in someone else's fifteen hundred famous people list, yeah? Take that 1500, and multiply it by one thousand. Yes, a thousand. Now you have one and a half million. Those famous people are a tenth of a percent in that huge number. Does that dream still seem attainable? Multiply the 1.5 million by a thousand once more. Now you have 1.5 billion. That fifteen thousand? It's one ten thousandth of a percent (0.0001%) These people have made it to the top ten thousandths of a percent of the world, at least. That's not even the entire population of the Earth. Justin Beiber and Nickelback are in your top ten thousandths of a percent or the global population. Feel bad, world, feel bad.

Are you feeling sufficiently teensy yet? It kinda makes your head spin. I'm guessing that around the ten thousands and millions the numbers pretty much lost all meaning. Completely normal. Humans were never meant to get this big for our boots. I can hear you now, "But Rachel, what do you mean "never meant to"? Are you suggestion belief in some higher being or plan?". Um, no. I'm just saying that, as far as we can tell, and judging by our genetic makeup and how we operate in contrast to other animals, we're kinda freaks of nature. We became (I'm taking this straight from "Chronical", I did not research this) the apex predator. Too powerful for our own good.

We're all nerdy little humans. Also, cats with glasses are cute.

We outsmarted all our natural predators, now we have none. We expanded, grew larger than our species was ever designed to grow. But our brains didn't change. Our mentality is still very much tribe orientated. We divide into little groups, bands, before we even really know we are. It's cleaner that way, more organised. We're the nerds of the animal kingdom, we like our organisation.

You have your family, that's one little group you belong to. That's maybe five people, plus a good few more in extended family. But they're separate. You have your group of friends. In schools, even when the authority figures don't demand it, we tend to fall into little cliques of like minded people. Again, this is the tribal mentality. It's just easier for our brains to cope with.

And now to my conclusion of this long winded rant-information-thing. We are incredibly small. But we can't really know that. So we reach for things that are way our of our grasp. And sometimes we get somewhere. Sometimes we knock over the shelf and break that jar we were reaching for. Sometimes we stop reaching altogether. I like to look at it this way: If you make an impression, any at all, you live a little longer. Because you live in someone else's mind as well as your own. Try and make that impression a little better than the likes of Justin Beiber's. Shudder.

Don't forget to look up some of my feeble attempts at leaving an impression on my Youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Racheloconnor28

This is ma twitter, I'm working towards 20 followers:
https://twitter.com/Oxymoronic28

And, as always, Embrace the Madness