Andy Warhol once (allegedly) said that “in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” This is often heralded as a prescient statement and indicative of our times, especially in an age of social media. However, I would argue that the statement needs a little finessing. It isn’t so much that everyone gets their chance to be famous for a short time and then are quickly forgotten. It is not that everyone is famous for fifteen minutes, but that everyone is famous to fifteen people.
Of course “fifteen minutes” and “fifteen people” are not meant to be taken literally, but the point is that, with rare exceptions, fame in our current age seems to be restricted in size and audience rather than time. Yes, social media can and has catapulted people to fame for brief periods of time, but it seems more likely to catapult people to fame in a very niche and increasingly splintered audience instead.
Even I, as a satirist and writer, get “recognized” once in a while and occasionally even asked for a selfie. This was surprising at first, but, then, I also live in the same area where much of my audience resides and outside of southern Manitoba the vast majority of people have no idea who am I or what I write. So I would not call myself “famous.” Maybe “Internet famous,” but even that would be a stretch. However, if you define famous as the existence of people who know who you are but you don’t know who they are, then I guess, by that definition, I have some level of fame, as do a lot of people. Maybe “everyone” is famous in this sense.
How often have you been in a conversation about a topic that you assumed others would recognize only to find out they had no clue what you were talking about? It happens to me a lot and while this may be attributed to my niche interests (Mennonite history or 1960s jazz, for instance), I also think it represents our increasingly splintered culture. Gone are the days where everyone consumes the same media and where we all have just 3 television channels and so we can assume our co-workers and friends have seen the same episode of Letterman or Who’s the Boss the night before. Gone are the days when our music options are limited to what is played on the radio or when our understanding of the news comes from a small handful of sources. In many ways, these options are great, but at the same time it does make water-cooler conversations a bit more challenging.
It’s also presents challenges to me as a satirist. When writing articles, I often try to spoof current news events or cultural phenomenons and I don’t always know if something that has hit my algorithm and showed up on my feed is actually a “thing.” Will others know what I am talking about or referring to?
Recently, I wrote a satirical article on college basketball phenom Caitlin Clark and was unsure whether my audience of regular readers would “get” the joke. In some circles, Clark is very well known, but the limited reaction to my article about her would indicate that her fame has yet to penetrate my primarily-Mennonite audience. Same goes for my article about “thirst traps,” although the limited reaction to that article did not really surprise me. When writing satire, it really is a matter of trial and error.
To be honest, Taylor Swift is one of the very few people that I can confidently write and assume that “everyone” will know who she is. Either her … or Donald Trump. Swift’s fame is remarkable in and of itself, but also because she seems to have garnered this widespread fame at a time when very few people are really all that famous, when very few people are truly “household names.” I can think of no other musician, certainly no “current” ones, with her level of fame and even Hollywood stars often don’t transcend the boundaries of a certain limited audience these days. YouTubers and TikTok stars can have hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers and still not truly be “famous” … certainly not the way Taylor Swift is … or the way Elvis was in the 50s or The Beatles in the 60s.
These days, there are a lot of people out there who are famous to fifteen people. Maybe some people’s “fifteen people” is a little larger than fifteen, but it’s still unlikely that even the most “famous” people of today will ever truly be known to the bulk of society. That’s okay. We all have our niche. We can’t all be Taylor Swift.
(photo credit: Eva Rinaldi/CC)