Friday, March 30, 2007
Fame Junkies
I finished reading a book by Jake Halpern called Fame Junkies. The book discusses the psychological underpinnings of why we are so attracted to celebrities. Jake researched ideas about para-social relationships (relationships held from afar) as well as looking at how primates behave in hierarchies. Turns out that male monkeys (rhesus macaques) are more interested in watching dominant males and the back sides of female monkeys than in looking at non-dominant males and the front sides of females. What does THAT say about the men in our species and their tendency to focus on the physical attributes of women? Should we bother worrying about what our butts look like? As for watching the dominant male monkeys, those who could keep track of the Big Cahuna could get in his good graces, thus ensuring survival - or they could avoid his bad moods, thus ensuring survival. Here we are, all a bunch of monkeys, acting out some biological imperative with celebrity worship. Only Jake indicates that our fascination with celebrities has gotten much worse, more out of hand. I was especially saddened by the chapter devoted to young people who attend talent schools in hopes of becoming famous. What a treadmill.
I'm interested in fame, as is evidenced by my Manifesto of Fame and my Squidoo lens on the topic, yet it feels like more of an academic interest. (I think that there will be more people taking an academic interest in fame as celebrity worship is on the rise.) Jake is quite forthcoming about the fact that when one studies fame, one is in danger of succumbing to the attention and glory of it all. What I'm wondering, that the book didn't discuss, is how does one get enough renown (fame is too strong here) to be able to survive on one's creative work? We don't all want to be Vincent VanGogh and die penniless and mad. How does one get a solid respect for her work, yet still maintain a sense of privacy and a solid personal life? How does one remain connected to those who support the work, are fans of the work, but avoid the overboard fan behavior?
I'm interested in fame, as is evidenced by my Manifesto of Fame and my Squidoo lens on the topic, yet it feels like more of an academic interest. (I think that there will be more people taking an academic interest in fame as celebrity worship is on the rise.) Jake is quite forthcoming about the fact that when one studies fame, one is in danger of succumbing to the attention and glory of it all. What I'm wondering, that the book didn't discuss, is how does one get enough renown (fame is too strong here) to be able to survive on one's creative work? We don't all want to be Vincent VanGogh and die penniless and mad. How does one get a solid respect for her work, yet still maintain a sense of privacy and a solid personal life? How does one remain connected to those who support the work, are fans of the work, but avoid the overboard fan behavior?
Labels: books, creative, fame, fame junkies, jake halpern, manifesto, monkeys, reading, squidoo
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Squidoo & Dave Matthews Band
He talked me into it, that Seth Godin. He recently posted about Squidoo and how the site had reached 50,000 lenses. Sounds like gibberish, I know, but I'll try to explain. Squidoo is a site on which "lensmasters" can build "lenses" around their favorite topics. You know how Google brings back a gazillion results, many of which have poor content or aren't quite what you're looking for? Squidoo is a response to that. In essence, anyone who signs up for Squidoo can be a lensmaster and build a webpage around any sort of topic they know something about. The closest I can come to describing this is that Squidoo pages, or lenses, are like annotated bibliographies - or webliographies, if you prefer. Because someone has taken the time to sift through all the dross, Squidoo's lenses are supposed to make finding relevant information easier.
After seeing Seth's post, in which he urged people to go to the site and build a lens, I surfed on over and looked around. Out of curiosity, I searched for lenses on a few topics - Duran Duran, tea, Neil Gaiman, writers - all had lenses (more than one). Then, I tried searching for Dave Matthews Band. There was no lens! For shame! How could this band have missed out? I decided to fix that, even though I'm no real expert on the band, and I built a Dave Matthews Band lens today. It's a lot longer than I expected and I'm not quite done with it, but at least the band is represented on Squidoo.
After seeing Seth's post, in which he urged people to go to the site and build a lens, I surfed on over and looked around. Out of curiosity, I searched for lenses on a few topics - Duran Duran, tea, Neil Gaiman, writers - all had lenses (more than one). Then, I tried searching for Dave Matthews Band. There was no lens! For shame! How could this band have missed out? I decided to fix that, even though I'm no real expert on the band, and I built a Dave Matthews Band lens today. It's a lot longer than I expected and I'm not quite done with it, but at least the band is represented on Squidoo.
Labels: dave matthews band, dmb, duran duran, neil gaiman, seth godin, squidoo
