After I rewatched a few old SCTV videos and dear old John Daker last week, the algorithms decided to introduce me to Stairway to Stardom. It's a New York city public access television show from the early 1980s, one in which eager unknowns performed in a "studio." They sang, they danced, they did their routines, all with the hope that this show would be the first rung on the ladder to fortune.
It never, ever was. Not once.
It's like America's Got Talent, only without all that much of the latter. Nothing about it parses as professional, which makes the performances a little painful to watch. "Cringe," as the kids used to say, but no longer do. The mismatch between the desire for fame and artistry is a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon, and as high as Olympus Mons.
There have always been folks who hunger for celebrity, who yearn for fame, who get caught up in the desperate grasping struggle to push their way into the public consciousness.
Back then, it meant shows like this one. Now, it means TikTok and YouTube.
Because the height of fame means you're gonna live forever, and people will remember your name, as that old film and TV series once sang into the eager ears of a generation. You shine like a star in the sky, and everyone thinks they know you, because they do, sort of.
And fame gives you power.
Social influence is one of the most ancient forms of power, stretching back deep into human history. If you are known, and you know people, those relationships translate into material success, which translates into more people knowing you, which translates into more power.
In the era of social media and "going viral," that hunger has spread further and and further into our culture, as commodified sociality has been reinforced, over and over again. You never know what moment might go viral, and that borderline subliminal awareness worms its way into our every relationship. Ooh, here's a cute dog pic! Here's me reacting to a thing I didn't make! look at me Look At Me LOOK AT ME! One needs no special talent, or any special skill at anything. Just dumb luck and pathological self-promotion. How else to explain Mr. Beast?
Filtered through the profit seeking lenses of corporate social media, our creative efforts stop being valuable in and of themselves, and become a parasocial means to an end. For the owners of the media, our art and music becomes a thing to be scraped for data and used for marketing. For us, it can...if we are not wary...mean our grasp of the point of art is drowned in a sea of grasping egotism.
Every form of human creativity has intrinsic value, but the moment we cease to delight in the act of creation and sharing? The moment we see it primarily in terms of Mammon's shine, of more and more and always more?
We've lost our way.
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