Social networks have managed to incentivize, and disseminate globally, stupidity once confined to a circle of friends — all in the name of ephemeral fame.
Social networks have managed to incentivize, and disseminate globally, stupidity once confined to a circle of friends — all in the name of ephemeral fame.
T ied to the rack, as the cogs turned and his bones began to slowly dislocate, he confessed. It had been he who had set fire to the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, so that his name would go down in history. His name was Herostratus, and he was the world’s first great example of ephemeral fame. Today, he would be a YouTuber.
He was executed. Valerius Maximus, responsible for conveying this story, remarked upon how “this passion for glory can reach the point of sacrilege.” In spite of everything, Herostratus took years to become famous. After his death, Ephesus forbade the spreading of his name to prevent him from fulfilling his purpose. However, the historian Theopompus, who was not an Ephesian, revealed it sometime later, spoiling the strategy.
Before Andy Warhol made the 15 minutes of fame official, popularity used to be a long process, often derived from something heroic. Sometimes, fame was a logical consequence of admiration. Our time has pioneered the diluting of that process, severing its link with admirable deeds.
Fame was first tied to word of mouth. Later, it was recorded in art, books, radio, press, and television. Today, it is on social networks. A single click, and a relevant story can travel the world in seconds, bringing any anonymous character to fame, regardless of merit.
Fame has shattered many lives. The artists of the ’80s often fell into drugs and self-destruction because they did not know how to handle their sudden popularity. But, with luck and a hit single, back then, it would take no less than a year for the fan phenomenon to be unleashed. Forty years later, the same thing can be achieved in a few seconds.
There are many songs dedicated to the devastation that fame brings. My favorite is by Cooper, a Spanish group led by my friend Alex Díez, and it is about a new band starting to become successful. Its chorus is an X-ray of dismay:
Today you have the world at your feet and your mind upside down
For what mattered to you no longer seems important
Today you only think of running away, I was like that too
You feel so tired of the glass boardwalk.
In 2021, we live under a pandemic of narcissism, for which there is no vaccine. The metaphor is not mine, but that of the American sociologists Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell in The Narcissism Epidemic. The authors differentiate between prevailing narcissism and healthy self-esteem. In the second case, people have an extraordinary opinion of themselves, but this does not prevent them from maintaining a sense of ethics and, above all, from continuing to love others. In the first case, what one feels for oneself is more akin to adoration, with the outside world appearing to be a rival, which awakens all kinds of grudges and hinders any way of relating to others.
Twenge and Campbell’s research uncovers a dangerous link between narcissism and the rise of socially reprehensible behavior in children and adolescents. It is also fair to note that narcissistic stupidity is not the exclusive terrain of young people: My neighbor, who looks to be about 1,400 years old, spends his days taking suggestive selfies of himself on the floor of his apartment, although the only thing they suggest to me is to block him.
When two individuals become famous for beating up a homeless man and broadcasting it live on social networks, our system of social punishment becomes ineffective. To the histrionic extent that these guys want to be famous at any cost, the punishment for their crime will be all the same to them if along the way they have managed to get their face reproduced on millions of phones. The number of followers gives them the false illusion that their actions have garnered ironclad support. In some insane way, they view these followers as accomplices who approve of their misdeeds.
Not long ago, a couple of idiots who worked in Spain as caregivers in an old people’s home posted, on their private social networks, a video in which one of them humiliated an elderly lady with almost complete paralysis. The worker insulted her, spat on her, and harassed her, while her friend — who filmed the scene — laughed her head off. Unexpectedly, some kind-hearted person distributed the video outside the girl’s private Instagram, and both miscreants were identified, fired, and socially repudiated.
One of them uploaded a video apologizing, but when someone shows herself to be the offspring of a hyena, apologies are welcome, however, they cannot alter the fact that we still think that girl has a heart of stone and a conscience drowned in sewage.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to conclude that it was a cocktail of evil, lack of values, dehumanization, narcissism, and stupidity that led those girls to vex the dying elderly lady. Without the social popularity obsession of Instagram, perhaps that disgusting scene would not have taken place. Some might say that thanks to the social networks, two assistants who didn’t deserve the job were fired, but I think the underlying fact is more important: There are many millions of people willing to do horrible things just to gain a few thousand followers.
I come back to Twenge and Campbell in underlining that Christianity used to be an effective method to curb our inordinate craving for notoriety. It is a good time to hold accountable all of those who, with political or media responsibility, have fought for years to dispense with Christian values in social life, in schools, in the media, and in families. Even if they are being coherent with their lack of faith, we could ask them: What the hell have you offered us in exchange?
Secularist ethics, the root of all conceit, can never be a natural filter for narcissism. He who has not received the promise of a glory in eternity is cannon fodder to fall into the clutches of the disordered obsession for glory in this world.
Ephemeral fame has become a generator of idiots who, before the explosion of the Internet, saw the dissemination of their stupidity confined to their circle of friends. Social networks have managed to spread stupidity around the world much more quickly and efficiently. This is the real medal pinned to Jack Dorsey.
A few days ago, I received on my cell phone one of those videos that make you suspect that the extinction of men (not so much of women) will come soon. It’s about a Russian with reddened skin, dressed in a bathing suit the size of a postage stamp, who goes for a run in front of a frozen lake in a place that seems to be at the temperature in which Ötzi’s mummy would feel at home. The guy starts running, and, when he reaches the edge of the lake, he takes a leap, no doubt worthy of Olympic applause, launching himself headfirst in an attempt to cross the — supposedly — thin layer of ice, recording it on video for immortal glory.
Unfortunately, the thin layer of ice was a thick layer of ice, and the man crashed into it, bruising each and every one of his bones, bouncing painfully. At that instant, the video cuts off. And it’s a pity, because it would have been nice to see what followed, which could have been an image of our completely plastered hero mumbling something like “children, don’t try this at home.”
Sometimes, I think that these madmen have misunderstood the epitaph that can still be read on the tombstone of the brilliant Spanish comedy playwright Enrique Jardiel Poncela: “If what you want is the highest praise, die.” By the way, Marcus Aurelius, who lived many centuries before Jardiel, seemed nevertheless to answer him when he wrote: “If fame only comes after death, I am in no hurry for it.”
At the end of the last century, Mark Snyder developed his theory of self-monitoring, no doubt connected to traditional fame. Self-monitoring is nothing more than the ability to assume a certain role and constantly examine oneself in order to act with total coherence as dictated by that role. This is also why the path to traditional fame is difficult, because it eludes any spontaneous behavior and, ultimately, any sign of sincerity.
Ephemeral fame largely eliminates self-control. In many cases, the individual does not know what really awaits on the other side of the wall of anonymity. When he crosses that threshold, he discovers that the feedback capacity of popularity in the globalized world can become a nightmare. Thus, we often end up identifying faces or small clips that, turned into memes, travel around the world, without knowing hardly anything about their protagonists or their intentions. Often, ephemeral fame is unexpected and uncontrollable. Perhaps Snyder should review his old claims today.
Nor has C. Wright Mills’ analysis of celebrities aged well. Essentially, his 1956 definition of celebrities is correct: “Those names that do not need to be identified”; however, it sounds outdated that the phenomenon is intimately linked to “the shadow of money and power,” and the media can certainly no longer be attributed the decisive role of celebrity creators.
Today, the celebrity creator would, at best, be an algorithm, making it difficult for us to grab it by the lapels and hold it accountable for the evil it spews into the world, or to simply unsubscribe from it. On the other hand, the algorithm is generous, in the sense that it invites a lot of people onto the catwalk of popularity, at the cost of making it increasingly ephemeral. “The heaven of fame is not very large,” wrote the Spaniard Miguel de Unamuno, “and the more there are who enter it the less is the share of each.” French author Honoré de Balzac, more pragmatic, told us: “Glory is a poison, good to be taken in small doses.”
In short, we must admit that, in one way or another, we are all poisoned by this narcissist thirst. It is part of the story of a great collective failure. Those of us in the media, who sell more or fewer books according to our good reputation, are more exposed to intoxication than most. I myself have made stupid promotions on social networks, which I would now disown every day of my life, in a vain effort to sell a few more copies. Someone might argue that these are the market rules of our trade. To the extent that I can’t exhibit musculature, let alone a pronounced cleavage, I have to find a way to compete with other authors of my time, often published by editors who, before even reading a line, visited their Instagram profiles to monitor their number of followers.
Be that as it may, beyond the media trade, we are failing as a society by feeding a narcissistic bug that drives us crazy and deteriorates our relationships with others. Far from shrugging our shoulders and thinking that this is just the way the world is, we should consider whether we are doing enough around us to curb this madness. I offer an unpopular opinion: If we don’t let our teenagers go out drinking until a certain age, perhaps we shouldn’t allow them to throw themselves into the universe of TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram either until we are confident that good judgment and common sense have nested in their little brains. And always, we should all burn into our hearts the great truth that Horace Greeley left written, “Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident … the only earthly certainty is oblivion.” In fact, whatever you do, in this world, the only one who never forgets you is the IRS.