Why I Never Want to Be Famous

Fame seems to be an utterly dehumanizing phenomenon

"Paris Hilton and the paparazzi" by jonrawlinson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Recently, in a fit of what I can only call temporary insanity, I decided to write a fan letter to a celebrity.

I carefully wrote it out by hand, copied it over again so that there were no cross outs (feeling a bit like an awkward preteen while doing so…seriously, where did this come from?) and got online to try and find an address to send it. I figured that there was probably a fan mail PO Box I could send it to, or maybe I could find an address for his agent.

Apparently I've been living under a rock. Fan mail addresses don't seem to exist anymore. Access to celebrities, even indirect access through their agent or publicist, is apparently big business. All I could find were company websites that promised me access to any celebrity I could possibly want to contact— provided I pay a fee.

I suppose most people trying for more connection than a social media account DM would be willing to pay a few dollars for the privilege. I decided to take a different approach.

There's a particular YouTuber I've followed off and on for several years (since before he created content for YouTube) who has recently interviewed this particular celebrity. He started small, but has gained more and more of a following over the years and has been attracting bigger and bigger names to his interviews. It seemed a bit of a stretch (and my inner preteen was finally beginning to get a bit self conscious), but maybe I could find a lead through this person.

I went over to his website, only to find that contacting him carried even more of a financial commitment than contacting the celebrity. There is a complete lack of contact information anywhere on the site; the only way to reach him at all is to sign up for a paid monthly subscription to his Locals account.

At this point, my inner preteen threw in the towel and I moved on to other things. Thinking back on the entire saga throughout my day though, I’m realizing that I most definitely do not want to be famous.

I think by this point most of us have seen conversations or even documentaries about the scourge of public pressure and paparazzi pursuit. It's no secret that being famous means losing all your privacy and having crazy people show up at your house. To be widely known is to be subjected to intense scrutiny to whatever you say publicly, and to whatever details of your private life can be found and sold.

Though the exterior threats of this sort of lifestyle are known, I don't often see much discussion of what living in that reality does to you as a person. I think having to live in that constant state of high alert makes you less able to interact with the people around you in any sort of normal or even loving way. More and more, as I try and put myself in those shoes, it occurs to me that to have a highly public persona may be to lose something of what it means to be a person.

Before I say anything else, I will say that I think hiding one’s contact and personal information as a celebrity is utterly necessary. I don't judge either the celebrity or the YouTuber for making themselves as difficult as possible to reach- both have families they need to keep safe.

I suspect, however, that having to do so makes them more vulnerable to the temptation to see themselves and other people as commodities.

As a mostly unknown person, I have a certain freedom to both give and accept personal time and attention. Because my Substack is so small, I have the ability to read and think about the comments I get and to reply to them. Because I don't have to assume that anyone I see knows who I am, I can offer or accept everyday conversation with people I run into at a restaurant or the library.

A famous person, on the other hand, gets no such peace. Because fame and fortune cause others to see you as less than a full person in that you’re seen primarily for the advantages you can provide, you have to put your guard up against being used. Larger content creators, like that YouTuber, have to put strict guidelines in place to be able to interact at all. Even more widely known people have to put those guidelines in place on all of their dealings with other people.

Their craft, the thing that they became known for, becomes the only way that they can freely interact with the world around them. Everything else has to be carefully crafted or hidden so that they can protect themselves. They lose the ability to be on equal footing with others, to relate with them as two people who are gradually discovering one another.

Similar to how some victims of sexual assault begin to see their bodies as currency, I wonder if some celebrities begin to see their presence and attention as a commodity. Not just on a professional level, but on a personal one. When a person is identified only by what they can offer, by their utility, they may start to see themselves and other people that way as well. I’m not sure what having your entire life history public knowledge does to the human psyche, but it’s so far outside the normal range of human interaction that I don’t think it could be anything good.

At any rate, even if they avoid that particular pitfall, a life of suspecting everyone who approaches you of wanting to use you, or of having to refuse peoples’ genuine thoughts and affection to avoid being overwhelmed by the volume of it, sounds like a really stressful and limiting way to live your life. Though I hope to be successful in my own craft, I’m beginning to hope that I never become publicly defined by it.