Why do certain people get famous? I have never really understood fame. I have never really understood the obsession with someone famous. I really haven’t (complete honesty here). When I read a book I like, I think it would be cool to talk to the author, but there are so many people who seem to see famous people as more than human. You especially saw it in those old films about the Beatles with those girls freaking out. On a neurological level, I probably understand it better. There is a person in front of you who is powerful. Powerful people can do a lot of things for you. There is some chemical in your brain that releases to make you excited both because of the power this person has to change your life and to also make you excited so you are noticed by this powerful person. That is probably how the neurochemical reaction goes. I don’t claim to know everything about the brain, but if you were to pose why people get so excited about famous people, a neuroscientist would probably give an answer similar to the one I have just given. And it is a really boring answer because every time you ask a neuroscientist about how a person is reacting to something in their environment, they will give an answer that sounds pretty much the same.
What I am asking is why on a conscious level do people flip out about famous people? And, back to my original question, why do certain people get famous?
Now the neuroscientist is going to keep on going back to the chemicals. “There’s something going on in their brain. The person gets a bucket of dopamine dumped onto their neuroreceptors,” is what he is going to say, but people experience consciousness. People experience decision-making. Even when a person gets excited, she can rise above her emotions to calm herself down. She can realize that she is getting really excited. She can realize that there isn’t much of a reason to get excited. She can bring herself down.
But people still get excited. And it is unwarranted excitement really. Do you get that excited when you see your parents? Do you get that excited when you see your spouse after a long day? How about when you see your kids? Why do you get so excited over someone you don’t even know? Why do you get excited over someone who doesn’t even know you exist? It could be that you want fame yourself. It could be that if you somehow catch that person’s eye, they can make you famous, but the chances of that happening are slim. If you are yelling like a maniac, those chances are even less. No one wants complete strangers screaming at them all the time. You are going to try to get away from those screaming strangers. Screaming strangers are not fun. Silence is fun. Solitude is fun. Being anonymous is fun because when you are famous (Because I know a lot about this, right?) everyone sees you, and everyone sees what you do (Which sounds like my worst nightmare).
But why do people get famous in the first place? I get the reason for some. If you are really good at something, people are going to want you to do things for them. You can do things for people who have more power, and if you do things for people who have more power, more people are probably going to see what you do. So, people start to wonder who made that really good thing and they find out it is you. This applies to anything you are good at.
Some people also get famous for the bad things they do. If you murder thousands of people over the span of twenty-five years, you are an anomaly. Most people aren’t killing that many people. Most people are averaging about two every twenty-five years, but you went way beyond that. Being a monster will get you famous really quick, but this rule doesn’t apply to just monsters. Any person who deviates from the norm is going to get famous more quickly. If you are the tallest person on earth, you will get famous because you are the tallest person on earth. If you can run really fast, that is your window. If you are enormously fat, you can bet on it that people are going to know your name.
Someone is going to tell me that I have answered my own question. The question still remains why we love variations from the norm so much. Seriously, we love it so much that we are willing to freak out when we see someone who seems to be different from the norm. And someone is going to probably go back to brain science for that. I can understand the brain science logic. It makes sense, but we also experience life, and that is really what I am interested in.