First Generation American:
You say you want to be famous on the internet, but would you really like fame in real life? Why or why not? Ie..if your blog hit the big time, would you want to be outed?
#1: I am famous… not a household name among normal folks, but people in my career area know who I am. Which is kind of disconcerting. But it is nice being respected in the field– I do good work and I’m getting a little credit for it. Or at least getting credit for sticking around (which is probably 80%, right?). If our blog hit the big time enough to be outed I would totally disavow it. #2 wrote the whole thing. Famous on the internet is fun when it’s anonymous, because it’s fame you can turn on and off. Stalkers, not so much with the fun.
#2: probably not, because then I couldn’t bitch about work
Would you like fame in real life?
November 11, 2011 at 1:59 am
I’d like to try it on, but I’m not sure that I’d want to buy it.
November 11, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Might be nice to visit but I wouldn’t wanna live there.
November 11, 2011 at 7:12 am
I think It depends on what kind of fame. Am I infamous or famous. Do I have lots of money? What am I famous for.
November 11, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Excellent points! I wanna be notorious.
November 11, 2011 at 7:45 am
Celebrity-style famous? No. Moderately famous — such as being widely recognized and respected in a field or career or being a highly regarded author — yeah, that may be OK. I just don’t relish the thought of having no privacy.
November 11, 2011 at 7:45 am
Ooh fun question. Put me down as a definite no. I revel in the reality that if you google the name I use professionally (“Bubbles,” no wait, not that one! My maiden name), a majority of the references that pop up on the first page are references to a fictional character (Ooh! Who is she? Jane Eyre? Hermione Granger?). If you google my married name, the real Slim Shady does stand up, but not in very interesting forms — you can learn where I went to high school and what my mailing address is and that I have spoken up at a town council meeting at least once in my life about a zoning decision on which I had an opinion — pretty flamboyant stuff.
To be honest, I also rather revel in the fact that even in the smallish (OK, not hugish — the times, they are a’changin’) town where I live I can often (not always) slip in and out of the grocery store, library, etc. unnoticed even if people I know are there. That makes me sound horrifically antisocial but I don’t think I am. I just don’t necessarily want to stop and chat in connection with running errands or whatever, stuff that others seem frighteningly prone to do (?). Or maybe I just smell bad and they’re as relieved as I am not to have to interact.
November 11, 2011 at 10:41 am
no, couldn’t think of anything worse! I’d much rather be successful in secret
November 11, 2011 at 12:52 pm
I’d rather be respected than famous, but sometimes a little fame helps attract the people who will respect you. Seems like a tautology. … Personalizing the issue: I’m well-known in a very small, very specific community. I try to stay visible within that community (and visible in a positive way, not in a “what is that crazy bitch doing now?!” way) because a certain visibility legitimizes me. If I want to be taken seriously in one area, that is, I need to show up in that area. If I just did my little thing in the corners and tried not to draw any attention, then no one would know who I am when I come around and want to work with them.
If *my* blog hit the big time (extremely unlikely) I don’t know what I would do. I think of writing my blog as more of a brain tune-up than anything else. I suspect I would feel pressured to change what, or the way, I write. So in that sense, no thanks.
If on the other hand I suddenly became recognizable to a larger community due to things I do IRL, I think I would do my best to craftily use new connections and newly-opened doors to do some things I currently can’t do because I don’t have access to the resources.
November 11, 2011 at 2:25 pm
ah yes, the benefits of fame: changing stupid shit to better shit! Yes!
November 11, 2011 at 1:26 pm
I have no desire to be famous. It sounds like a lot of trouble. I’d take money over fame any day. :)
November 11, 2011 at 2:26 pm
I would love to be secretly wealthy. Instead, I am not-very-secretly middle-class.
November 12, 2011 at 11:17 am
Agreed. I’d take the fame if it came with money, though. That probably makes me a sell out. Or shallow. But I really don’t care.
November 11, 2011 at 6:46 pm
No, I don’t think I’d like to be famous. Too much hassle, and I’m sure what the reward is (other than money, which would be nice, but can be had without getting famous).
I don’t even really want to be famous on the internet, because that brings out the trolls.
I don’t need wide spread professional acclaim, but I do need to feel respected by my peers and colleagues.
Mostly, though, I want to be useful- i.e., I want to do work that is useful to the world. Sometimes I think I’m succeeding at that, sometimes I don’t.
I haven’t really thought too much about this before, but I guess that explains why it makes me happy when someone says that a blog post of mine helped them, even though I didn’t really set out to write a “useful” blog.
November 11, 2011 at 8:28 pm
No way in heck. I already don’t recognize half the people who say hi to me by name as it is.
Plus, anti-stalker, marketer, trolls, and other people I have to be nice to just because they made me famous….
November 12, 2011 at 7:49 pm
You’re very confused. People in your field knowing who you are isn’t “fame”.
November 14, 2011 at 5:17 am
I see what you’re doing here. You’re soundly putting us young (female) upstarts down while building yourself up by showing that you are so well known in your field you don’t even consider that fame. (Like Mr. Darcy’s family refusing noble honors.)
Well, I consider being recognized by people I have never met to be fame. And screw you if you want to put me in my place. I get that enough from men in my own field.
November 14, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Word, mah sistah!
People (on any scale) knowing who you are is EXACTLY what “fame” is. “Fame” is not the same as “celebrity.”
November 13, 2011 at 8:20 am
I dated a famous and very recognizable person at one time in my life. We always went to the same places or hung out at his house until one day I begged him to take me to a fancy restaurant I’d been wanting to go to and to a giant hipster music/movie warehouse thingy that I hadn’t been able to get to yet. Stupid me, I forgot he was famous. The restaurant was OK, though the maitre d’ was a little extra ass-kissy, but the warehouse media store was a nightmare. OMG, the staring and the following and the whispers and the autograph asking! It was so uncomfortable. Maybe you can get used to it, but I wouldn’t like it at all. It felt so invasive. Ick.
So, no, I wouldn’t want to be that famous.
Among medievalists, Dr. Virago is better well known than real-life me, which amuses me, though real-life me is catching up, in part because I’m out among medievalists and so I’ve merged Dr. V’s admirers with real-life me’s admirers, but also because my book has been out for 4 years now and is getting cited. I apparently have lots of grad student fans, which is cool, because it’s nice to think I’m being an influence on the next generation of scholars in my niche of medieval English lit. But I can’t really reap that influence for a long time, alas.
Oh, and I’m on TV in the local market in a small way. That’s enough to get people who don’t know my academic work around here to say, “Hey, I saw you on TV and you were great!” without the obsessive-level fame that my former romantic partner (above) has.
So all of that small peanuts stuff is good enough for me. And I don’t want to be a really big time blogger, either.