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Would you like to be famous or...?

Phantom

Phantom

Uh, I didn't do it.
Scenario: You can be famous, whether it be in music, academics, sports, acting, business, or anything that would make someone considered 'famous', whether you worked hard to get to where you are, or whether it came naturally to you...

Pretty simple. Would you want to be famous now and forgotten later?

How would you deal with the results of being famous? The money, the fans, paparazzi. Would you be able to deal with the amount of attention and media? Would it wear you down to have your life being consumed by the general public? To have your actions judged by the public, but to have all the money and favors you'd ever need?

or

Would you want to be remembered?

Would you prefer to live your life in quiet and have your accomplishments be discovered after you were gone? To be remembered for future generations, but to have lived a life as a relative unknown?
 
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Are these scenarios mutually exclusive? Because my first thought was 'yeah, I'd want to be famous; think of the potential to influence the world through my work'.
 
I would feel reasonably safe in the knowledge that my chosen field would never gain me paparazzi or huge amounts of money, so I guess I would be fine with fame as long as I felt like I had earned it.

But I don't like being the centre of attention. It makes me feel itchy. So I'd be a really reclusive weird celebrity who has like, one interview every five years and it makes everyone who watches it feel really uncomfortable.
 
Not being able to go places without being bombarded by people taking pictures of my unphotogenic self is too much of deal breaker, honestly.
 
If I could choose only one, I would definitely prefer to be remembered. I'm more of a long-game kind of person, and obviously doing something that will get you lasting esteem is the better long-term play. Being dead and stuff means you don't get to enjoy the fact that people know your name and such, but it probably means that, even if nobody recognized it at the time, you got to do some pretty badass stuff during your time. I think that I would get more lasting pleasure (even while alive) out of that than whatever I might do to create a kind of flash-in-the-pan stardom.

Otherwise heck yes I'd take the fame. I'm young and foolish and ambitious, of course I'd take the fame.
 
See I'm going the "theater not film" route of acting which gives me all the fans and recognition without most of the paparazzi :D (also probably leaves me broke haha)
 
Flora said:
See I'm going the "theater not film" route of acting which gives me all the fans and recognition without most of the paparazzi :D (also probably leaves me broke haha)
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And if you ever feel the need for paps, you can just join the cast of Glee. I'm sure it'll still be fucking on. D:
 
honestly I really feel like the lack of respect mass media has for the privacy of celebrities really turns me away from any kind of fame. I'd be okay with being remembered I suppose, but the idea of influencing a lot of people worries me a little? I don't feel like I'm a particularly good role model! It'd be kinda neat if people enjoyed the things i produced but really I'm still baffled when people say they like the things I do.
 
Tailsy said:
But I don't like being the centre of attention. It makes me feel itchy. So I'd be a really reclusive weird celebrity who has like, one interview every five years and it makes everyone who watches it feel really uncomfortable.
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Harper Lee's livin' the dream.

I don't think I really want to be famous. I can't think of anything I'm good at enough to be famous for (don't get me wrong, I'm good at lots of things, I'm just not amazingly fantastic at anything, and I'm okay with that), and the people I care about already think I'm great, I don't really feel the need for approval of strangers.

...That said, one of my dreams-that-will-never-happen is to be a children's TV presenter, and that actually does require something I'm amazingly fantastic at (as far as I can tell: being happy, enthusiastic, and wearing colourful clothes), but that's more so I'd be able to spend my days making arts and crafts out of old fairy liquid bottles and going to places and petting animals than wanting to be recognised in the street.
 
Nowadays with all of these 'reality' shows, there's really no lack of people who become famous for a very short duration, and there's no lack of cases of former 'reality' celebrities who have commited suicide following their fall from the spotlight. Alternatively, look at politicians. They often go mad with power and don't last for even one election cycle. It's very easy to see the destructive effect fame can have.

That aside, I'm also the sort of person that gets intensely uncomfortable when they're next to even one stranger, so being surrounded by people I don't know would probably cause me a stroke.
 
I'm probably in the group of people where even if I did get famous, it'd be in a field where I won't be that famous so I probably wouldn't get the worst of the attention.

The only thing I'm remotely good at is maths, but nowhere near good enough at to get famous for it. Even if I did get famous for it, how famous would I get? What famous mathematicians are alive right now? Andrew Wiles? Even then he's not that famous.
That said, if it were for something sciencey, I'd prefer to be remembered since that'd mean something was named after me and what I did was probably a memorable contribution.

Another thing I wouldn't like about being famous is if something gets taken out of context by the papers, and people get angry about it, you're expected to apologise even if what you actually said had nothing to do with why people got angry. Being forced to apologise makes it meaningless. But refusing to makes you seem like a bad person.
 
it would really depend on the context of fame for me.
i want to write manga when i am older along with whatever job i do so if that manga was famous and sold a lot of copies that would be great.
i wouldn't want paparazzi everywhere following me so.
 
Well, depends... I think I would rather live to enjoy my fame. But it would have to be in something I'm good at, or like (what's the point of fame if it's doing something you don't enjoy?)

Say, I want to be a game designer, and it would be cool to be a famous game designer, but I would still enjoy my job without the fame, that would just be a fun bonus. Plus, it doesn't seem the easiest to be famous in, the only game designer that could be called "famous" (outside of their respective series' fandoms) I know of is Miyamoto, and I'm not sure how known he is outside of gamer/"geek" culture anyway (most people know about Mario and possibly Zelda, but they might not know who created them?)

I wouldn't want paparazzi running around everywhere, but having money and getting fans would be nice.
 
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Dannichu said:
...That said, one of my dreams-that-will-never-happen is to be a children's TV presenter, and that actually does require something I'm amazingly fantastic at (as far as I can tell: being happy, enthusiastic, and wearing colourful clothes), but that's more so I'd be able to spend my days making arts and crafts out of old fairy liquid bottles and going to places and petting animals than wanting to be recognised in the street.
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This needs to happen.

I don't know; I don't want to be famous in the everything-I-do-is-scrutinized-by-the-mass-media sense, but I enjoy my tiny current degree of internet fame, largely just because it means a wider audience I can share the things I do with. It makes my day when somebody thinks the silly things I spend my day on are awesome, and if we were talking simply more of that as opposed to paparazzi and gossip, that would be wonderful. It's nice to think that after my death people would discover the things I did and continue to think they're awesome for ages to come, but on the other hand I wouldn't be around to enjoy it, and really, if I'm dead, I don't give a damn if they remember to associate my name with it, so it's not about being remembered so much as just the stuff I did living on.
 
Murkrow said:
The only thing I'm remotely good at is maths, but nowhere near good enough at to get famous for it. Even if I did get famous for it, how famous would I get? What famous mathematicians are alive right now? Andrew Wiles? Even then he's not that famous.
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Hey, Andrew Wiles is plenty famous. Also there's Ben Green, for some very specific definition of famous.
 
I fully intend one day to be the Prime Minister of the UK (yes, Scotland either comes back or doesn't leave at all but everyone's happy) who spearheads the full integration and political union of the EU, leaving my post only to become the EU President.

So I'll take both options, Bob.
 
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