How Influencers Killed Hollywood’s Influence
Being a celebrity doesn’t pack the same punch that it used to.
Being a celebrity doesn’t pack the same punch that it used to.
What is it about seeing someone on screen for an hour or two, feeling an emotional connection to a compelling character they portray, and then seeing them in real life and reacting with a palpable excitement?
There is some kind of huge novelty dopamine hit involved with being in the presence of a complete stranger that we somehow feel familiar with, yet we don’t know at all.
Someone whose art we have connected with deeply, or someone whose art we have merely enjoyed, yet — on a personal level, we are only filled with projections about them.
What is Fame, really?
Throughout most of our history, fame was a rare gift/curse that was bestowed only through various gatekeepers of whatever paradigm in each culture served to create and reinforce fame and celebrity.
In militaristic cultures, soldiers and statesmen attained fame.
In religious or ascetic cultures, the most disciplined monks and students become famous.
For most of human history, fame was almost always a matter of two conditions:
Visibility - being elevated by a popular platform (state status, societal achievement, theater, etc)
Inaccessibility — Being mostly out of reach to everyone who has heard of you
The internet has completely upended that reality in less than 20 years.
The magician behind the curtain is starting to be understood.
Fame in 2024 is a matter of determination, effort, and the right idea.
Sometimes simply having the right combination of keywords hitting on trending topics, with compelling video content people gorge, is enough to create a miniature celebrity who gets recognized when they go out.
Many people are famous merely by having loud entertaining public opinions, offensive, or not. I’ve know someone with 50,000 followers who gets spotted while they are out and people say hello to them at random.
Now, anyone, and I do mean anyone, can get at least 15 minutes of fame. Even if you aren’t “famous”, you can become very recognizable.
As a result, fame has lost quite a bit of it’s original mystique.
Some can attain internet fame easier than others, but the gatekeeping forces and the landscape have COMPLETELY changed.
Visibility is still 100% needed, but the options now are varied and there are few, if any, barriers to entry
Inaccessibility no longer exists unless you attain a level of fame that is often artificially supported. Almost everyone on the “fame gradient” today, is accessible to their fans, and their fans — have come to LOVE and EXPECT this.
Many of the modern caste of internet celebrities — are within reach for communication, if you dare.
Oh look, its one of my freakin’ heroes, commenting with his fans:
Reach Out and Touch Someone
Quite a few of my favorite “celebrities”, I have spoken with on the internet.
Many of them, favorite guitar players.
All of them have Instagram, and in many cases, that is really them commenting (most instrumentalists comment on their own profiles, even if they have a service posting/commenting for them — they have access and sign in and comment at times, it’s fucking great).
Steve Vai, Per Nilsson, Tim Henson, Avery Green, Lari Basilio, Tosin Abasi, all of the great players I look up to today, are within a comments reach, and I seriously mean that.
You can make a video, post it, tag them, and they might comment back.
They can and do communicate with fans, and as a result a totally different kind of relationship to celebrity/novelty is forming for many younger people.
One not based on the novelty of false familiarity with a complete stranger, but a real connection or experience interacting with the human being and that human being accessible.
In short, the people we admire, do not feel scarce anymore.
Being essentially within comments reach, the experience of “celebrity” itself wanes.
These are real people.
People who might inspire me, motivate me, and move my life in positive ways, but they are just people.
And now many of them aren’t out of reach.
Young Bass Players like Ellen Alaverdayan are growing up in a completely different world.
I imagine how cool it is for me, right now, interacting with my favorite musicians, and I can’t imagine how it must be growing up simply having access to them and having it be normal.
This is true for many “internet famous” people.
It is not true at all for Hollywood.
Almost all Hollywood celebrity is completely removed from any kind of easy contact with their fans. And while this does help reinforce the old patterns of elevating that person onto a pedestal so high they seem ethereal, the effect is not at all what it once was.
In a world where fame has a gradient, a world where fame comes in all sizes, a lot of the pull and influence that was once in the grasp of Hollywood and those who use Hollywood to push messages, has completely lost it’s grip.
When we have access to people we can converse with at times, who seem within reach, vs people who are inaccessible all of the time, we are going to opt for human connection.
We trust human connection more than celebrity. No matter how much novelty celebrity has, or it’s ability to form deep emotional achors in us based mostly on identification and projection, it is truly no match for real connection or the contemplation of it.
The most influential people in our lives are people who WE KNOW and INTERACT WITH. This has always been true.
Being able to know and interact with a good portion of the people who inspire us is a different world indeed.
I simply don’t feel any kind of novelty any more towards a Hollywood actor/actress.
Most of the people who inspire me — those whose work, thoughts, and art have impacted my life — are very accessible now.
They feel as reachable as my high school class on Facebook does.
And they have more potential influence on me than any celebrity will ever have.
Thank you for reading!
Until next time….
Onward and Upward Everybody!
-Chris
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