Everybody Will Be Famous on Social Media for 15 Nanoseconds
Social Media’s Fame & Indulgence Fetish: Loops of Compulsion:
In 1968, Andy Warhol supposedly said “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen-minutes.” If he did say it (he never admitted saying it), he could not have anticipated the relevance of that prediction to 21st century social media — one-half century later — and how significant the notion of ‘trending’ and ‘viral’ would be to people who succumbed to the endless pursuit of fleeting fame, and the micro-dopamine release that affirmation provides. Perhaps he would have rephrased to say “in 50 years, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen- nanoseconds,” or fifteen-billionths of a second.
In social media publishing, affirmation, memorialization, and edification are principal motivators. That’s a wide tangent from the humble 1993 CERN World Wide Web intended purpose that evolved out of the scientific research sector. Truly those early posts were affirmed based on merits that social-media is virtually devoid of. Content was by and large text with substance.
‘Everybody can’t be on top — Prince
Once social media metastasized into the mainstream, it obfuscated and saturated the medium with personal content — most of which — about 54% —…
