Fame is when idiots make a mythic character in their own heads, and pick out a few things that you've said and done so they can put your face on that character, and then when you don't fit what that character is supposed to do, they get personally offended.
The comment:
This struck me as being precisely the dynamic that has governed my 4-time-divorced, now 84-year-old mother's approach to romantic relationships her entire life... What is it about the way we try to fill the empty places in our hearts with, not the companionship of other frail, flawed humans, but with avatars of our projected craving for superheroes and archetypes?
This is a really good question, and my answer is that we need two words for "real": one for the unseen deeper realness that we sometimes feel, and one for things that persist when they're being tested in front of everyone.
Our world is a dialogue between these two forces. The archetypes are where the light comes from, but we can't just have living archetypes walking around, because they're too strong and simple to match the complexity of a world shared among billions of perspectives.
Our challenge is to glow with the ambient light of myth, to absorb the raw bolts from the world of dreams and pass them through ourselves to feed the fragile circuits of every moment.
The internet has changed the nature of "fame". In the past, you needed to generally buy into fame. To be famous, you needed managers, publicists, etc. Media access was a limited resource that was handed out only to those that met approval.
This created in the audience certain expectations about what it means to be famous. Don't treat the audience wrong or do anything too far outside those expectations or face the audience's wrath.
The internet changed what it means to be "famous" because the internet is media access. Unfortunately, the sociology of the audience hasn't caught up and often still apply the old expectations.
I can relate to this, and unlike the examples in the article, I'm not even trying to please an audience or make money. I'm just writing what I enjoy writing, and putting it out there, and even though I'm very careful with words, I still get in trouble with some readers.
Nobody who understands fame wants to be famous. Fame is when idiots make a mythic character in their own heads, and pick out a few things that you've said and done so they can put your face on that character, and then when you don't fit what that character is supposed to do, they get personally offended.
But also, fame is created by technology. You can't be famous among people who really know you. Fame requires thin and distant connections. And the internet enables thinner and more distant connections than ever before.
But the internet at least allows the possibility of thick connections, and that's my optimistic vision of the future of fame. Andy Warhol said everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, because in his time there was a single monolithic public eye. Now every person can be their own eye, and we haven't learned to work with this yet, but when we do, it's possible for everyone to be a content creator with a tiny and dedicated audience: In the future, everyone will be famous among 15 people.
"A lot of what slows down animation is telling the next person what to do. If I draw something really scribbly, I have to leave a lot of notes for the next guy. The same guy needs to leave notes for the in-between drawings. I skip all of those notes, I have it all in my head," says DiLiberto.
The advantage of this gluttonous approach is an omnipotent level of creative control. In the wrong hands that could lead to disaster, but with Nova Seed it results in a product that feels child-like in the best way. The universe is as idiosyncratic as a daydream and feels as spontaneous as a doodle, mixing mad scientist sci-fi tropes with the type of toy action that fills the sandboxes of elementary school boys.
Related, a long interview with another guy doing an epic personal project, Dwarf Fortress creator Tarn Adams talks about simulating the most complex magic system ever.
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