The title is intentionally misleading. It doesn't suck to be famous, but it isn't all fun and games and, for some, it's downright hell. Here's a take on why being famous might not be what you really want.
Fame is...ISOLATION
Yes, fame-- whether it's been on a billboard or everyone in your high school knowing your name when you pass them in the hallway. It is the famous who feel the most isolated. It is ironic, yet I'm sure when you think about it...it makes perfect sense. It is the end of glamour and the beginning of a reality very few could understand. Here, we will endeavor to understand it.
Your experience is "weird" and people can't "relate"
Guy on the right woke up in his dorm one day and was told his first book that he started when he was 15 was selling millions of copies
Imagine you walk into your backyard to get some fresh hair and watch the fireflies. Suddenly, you feel your foot lifting in the air...and then the other one. In a minute, you are floating up in the air. You have no idea how you did it, but you see all your neighbors suddenly around staring at you. You see people you've never even seen in this part of town crowding in the streets to witness you. Some start to spectulate that you are amazing and important to humanity. Others say you are a joke and phony or worse a monster. You call your friends but they seem a little weirded out by you. People who didn't give you the time of the day suddenly want to be seen with you and agree with everything you say. Wherever you go people ask you to float. Sometimes when you float people say it isn't the same way or they say you're old news. Some people cry when they see you float and put all their hopes and dreams into you and if you were ever to stop floating they would fall apart. This sounds insane since it defies gravity, but the truth is our society often finds famous celebrities of all kind to be different...more than the rest of us. They exist in a different plain. Even if you aren't into celebrities, you're aware and affected by their presense. They exist in your mind...however small. This is the experience of many famous people...would you want it too?
Everything you say is wrong to someone...the voices of hatred are louder than the voices of love
A Britney Fan never dies...but they do come off as strange...
Famous people have to deal with hate from all angles. People who don't think they deserve their attention, people who want it for themselves, people who simply are into a different type of celebrity and feel the need to vocalize this. We assume they aren't bothered by being hated...that it doesn't hurt them and they have overcome all insecurity. This is often the opposite. Celebrities who last long enough have to deal with horrible things being written about them all over the internet and in print. Even the best cannot avoid the negative feelings that thousands feel for them. Because they are human, it is natural that they focus more on the hate than the love especially because hate for a famous person grows as love for them dies. It is not a coincidence that after a famous person makes or does something that isn't very well recieved that they disappear afterwards. It isn't just about not being able to get peopel to work with you...it's the clawing feeling that everyone hates you and wants you to just shut up. Think James Blunt. Hell, even Eminem talks about being obese and depressed after releasing Encore and this is a guy who had the fast selling album ever at 28 years old. We love to pass judgment in our ivory towers, but how much respect to we get when we gush about how great a famous person is?
You feel like you may not deserve it...
Oh John...did the fame make you a douchebag pretending to be a sweeetheart? Or did the douchebag pretending to be a sweetheart make you famous?
Caleb Followhill intentionally wrecked his own music years before King of Leon became the biggest band in America for that short time way back when. Justin Vernon put Bon Iver on indefinite hiatus just when they had brought Folk Music to the forfront of American Billboard Charts. We've all heard of the famous person who got it and then freaked out that maybe they didn't deserve it. They look around at all their success and how easy it was and feel guilty and feel paranoid. They want to make sense of the world just like we all do but their world makes a lot less sense. What they want...they get. Who they want to be...they become. The world is there's. But why do they get that and for how long could it possibly last since they didn't have to work their entire lives for it? Those Chosen Ones...
The only way to be everything to everyone is to be nothing at all...
So what about Beyonce? The Beatles? Derek Hough? (He's won dancing with the stars 5 times in 8 years) Those who no one ever dates challenge or hate in anyway despite being massivly more successfull than we could ever dream to become. These famous famous people give up an identity and become nothing more than just the image of a person. What do you know about Beyonce versus how much you know abotu Rihanna's personality? What do you really know about the legend that is the group that can never be challenged? It's just plain awkward to question these people, so few do. Yet, who are they? We'll never know. We probably don't want to know. We probably don't want to have a deep connection with them. We just want the fantasy and to be wanted only as fantasy and never as an equal human...that is isolation at it's greatest.
So, yeah, being famous is NOT at all what we think it to be. However, it's my opinion that all of the stuff I've talked about is still better than the massive feeling of mediocrity that comes from not going for it. I am not defending famous people...I don't even care that you understand them. I just want you to be sure you know what you're going to get when you decide to do something that puts you center stage.
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