I could be famous (if I wanted to be)

16 Feb, 2025

Original draft: ~1 year prior to publishing

If you're like me and spent 90% of your life observing rather than acting, you'll start seeing patterns in anything of your daily life: what noises animals like to do in a given situation, how an object interacts with another, and even how humans act as a whole. (This is kind of a psychology thing, but I'll get to that later.) Simply just observing things has helped me with teaching myself a lot about how the world works, even if I've never actually done the thing I observed.

For example, when aiming a gun, you have to make sure the front and the back of the gun align to be able to aim properly. Whenever I played Call of Duty or other first-person shooters, I always noticed how the aiming was done in those games, as well as reloading and whatnot. So at some point, my brain thought "this is how it must work in real life". Sure enough, once I got my hands on an air soft gun, my theory confirmed itself, and it's like I was a natural at handling guns.
It's the same thing with Hot Dogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades - if you know how gun reloading and aiming works, all you have to fight now is the controls (they take a while to get used to)… at least that's how I felt about it.

You could say that video games have taught me a lot of things, but it's mainly due to my observation skills. Plus, there's still some things that didn't make sense to me until I actually tried them out in person.

But enough about guns - how does this relate to fame?

Let's think about it: have you ever looked at someone and thought "I know what they're gonna say/do next" or "I can tell who that is/was from a description alone"? If so, congratulations! I hope you're using that information for good. In its simplest form, you could be making a good (inside) joke or show someone a thing you know they'll like.

However… what if you didn't use it for good? Again, there's basic forms for this: you know how you coud hurt someone, or you know how to annoy them. (Be nice to people!)

But there's so much more still that you could do. What if you start looking for people with similar mindsets? What if you understood how a generation of people thinks and works? What if you could predict what they want, what they desire, and give them exactly that?

I feel like it doesn't take a lot of effort to figure out how to drive activity surrounding you - just do something bad. People aren't gonna like you, but hey, at least you got attention.

No, that's not what we want. We want GOOD attention. We want to do or make things that people want.

Honestly, the best way to go about this is to just share creations related to your hobbies and interests with the world. You'll naturally gather an audience that way - slowly but surely - and you'll be part of a small community that cares about you and wants to see more of your niche.

…or we could do things that we don't care about at all. Things that are popular. Things like YouTube or TikTok videos. Pick a topic that a lot of people like - could be video games, could be movies, could be food… you get the point.

What do you do next with that topic? Make it devoid of any personality.

…I'm not joking. You have to scrub your content clean of anything that someone could even remotely consider offensive - this is how you get the broadest audience. This includes politics, religion, etc… even LGBT, unfortunately. Just look at YouTube's last Rewind video - it's full of random videos that have nothing to do with each other… and I certainly haven't heard of most of these channels/videos, either (except Seth Everman, he was cool¹).

It could mostly be due to my heavily curated online experience, but I've never seen anyone attempt to show me a beauty video, and I sure as hell don't care about them either… but it's accessible; everyone knows what "beauty" means.

Not to offend anyone interested in beauty, but it's such a lame topic to make content about, because of the fact alone that it's so widely known. Niche stuff is more interesting to me, but not everyone can grasp it as easily. Most may even consider it "weird".

The broader picture here is that the majority of Earth's inhabitants have begun using the internet as a tool, not as a form of expression. You may be thinking otherwise, depending on the circles you're in, but just remember that the most-followed accounts on Twitter are mostly there to spread their propaganda or whatever. I'm specifically thinking of political figures in that regard, but I'm convinced there's other examples, too - I just can't think of any from the top of my head, and this post isn't about carefully researched facts anyway, just thought experiments.

Back on the topic of "the internet as a tool", that is basically what YouTube and TikTok are built on, especially TikTok. They're not there for you to build your own personal audience, they're there as "content machines" for the general public to consume and survive on ads. Sure, you can use them in a meaningful way, but the majority of video creators and those who watch those videos aren't on these platforms because they want something meaningful… the former is only in it for fame and/or money, and the latter is only there to have their time wasted.

It's partially why a lot of YouTubers constantly remind you to "like and subscribe", but I feel like the message behind that call for action is mixed, depending on who you ask. I'm personally bothered by it, as are many others that I talk to, but at the same time, this is realistically the only way that they can build a meaningful audience… or retain their current one and make money off of it.

Like I said, the logistics behind it is really complicated, and I don't really want to get into further detail in that regard, or even show any examples. You'll just have to judge these on a case-by-case basis, and even then, you're guaranteed to have differing opinions compared to others… or even me.

Personally, I don't create often. And when I do, it's things that I want to make, not things that people told me to make. I like to hear sometimes what people enjoy about my creations, what they'd like to see more often from me, or maybe they have a specific request sometimes, however it's still up to me on whether I actually want to make it or not.

Because, if I were to only do what others wanted, what would I be?

#opinions