MIND GRENADES
Instagram sphinxes. Consider one: Kylie
Jenner, the 21-year-old mother of one from
a reality TV family, whose swollen lips came
to national attention in 2015 when a debate
raged about whether they were shot through
with hyaluronic acid or, as Jenner main-
tained, merely overlined. Jenner’s eventual
I-chopped-down-the-cherry-tree confes-
sion that, yes, she’d had her lips enhanced
with acid injections apparently defined her
as a singularly candid ingenue. She went
on to pursue lip care as a profession and
centuries considered morally superior to
yearning for money or power. In antiquity
up through the Renaissance, fame was the
name given to humankind’s admiration
for individuals who enlighten, entertain,
and advance it. Hush, Sun Tzu: Eagerness
for fame just is eagerness to contribute to
humanity. And sure, to have your name on
that contribution for all time—who doesn’t
want to touch immortality?
Among the profane human aspirations,
fame might be at the top of the Westernin some inexplicable way then became a
billionaire with a name better known than
Beowulf’s. The yongenest self-madeiost
femaliest lofgeornost billionaire.
Sun Tzu of The Art of War looked down
on generals who went into battle seeking
fame; he considered love of king and coun-
try a leader’s only worthy motivations. But
in the West, fame has long been the explicit
endgame for warriors and lip gloss mag-
nates alike. Leo Braudy, whose book The
Frenzy of Renown appeared before social
media was a glimmer in the internet’s eye,
warns readers of the ’80s against wringing
their hands over the fame culture that had
lately produced Arnold Schwarzenegger
and Madonna. According to Braudy, every
era from Beowulf’s to our own believes it
invented fame as a goal—and a scourge.
Those keen on fame are generally eager
to outdo the stars who have come before
them. Alexander the Great, Braudy explains,
sought fame like that of the Greek god
Achilles—a tall order for a human, given
that Achilles enjoyed near-invincibility
and had seabirds as servants. Julius Caesar
anguished over falling short of Alexander
the Great. Serial killers long for the legacy
of Jack the Ripper. As a young Venice Beach
bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger fashioned
himself after the pagan gods. John Lennon
compared the Beatles to Jesus.
While yearning for celebrity, especially
on the scale of Jesus or Arnold, might seem
small-souled, aspiring to fame was for
hierarchy. As Young Thug says, “We need
money. We need hits. Hits bring money,
money bring power, power bring fame,
fame change the game.” Fame, unlike
power or money, outlives the person who
has it and expands infinitely the borders
of a single human life. Changes the game.
(Just about every lyric about fame
rhymes it with name or game or both. A
readily rhymable word, useful in rap or
poetry, accumulates power.)
Leonardo da Vinci agreed with
Young Thug about celebrity being life’s
game-changing apex, and he further
believed that the rich and powerful, by
pursuing land and money, miss the whole
point of existence. “How many emperors
and how many princes have lived and died
and no record of them remains, and they
only sought to gain dominions and riches
that their fame might be everlasting?”
Which brings us—flipping past the
EnlightenmentVictoriansModernismTV—
back to the present, to digital times. The
internet is a sprawling and anarchic record.
In a few decades the internet has swallowed
the record, and become coextensive with it.
When no trace of something exists online,
can it be said to be famous? Inconceivable.
Can it be said to even exist? “Pics or it didn’t
happen” is a stock response to an improb-
able story told online. To become history,
experience must first become pixels.
If Leonardo was right, and our accom-
plishments and good deeds gain valuechiefly by their place in the record, what
happens when we all seem to have a high-
level editorial position with that record?
Where once it took Homer or Petrarch
or Samuel Johnson or at least the yearbook
editor or obituary desk to decide if you
were worth writing about, in the 21st cen-
tury you can write about yourself, all the
livelong day, on Twitter. You can exist in fil-
tered self-portraiture, create SoundCloud
hymns to yourself, and inscribe yourself
repeatedly in the record, in the Book of Life
or—for risk takers—on the imperiled social
network, Facebook. If you make enough
content, you might even take up as much
space on YouTube as Kurt Cobain does. Or
at least Hercules.
A friend once told me about a strange
type that appeared in Japan in the aughts:
the charismahiki, as he dubbed them. The
“charismatic shut-ins” is a contradictory
archetype; famous recluses. Online all
day from their bedrooms, the charisma-
hiki pose in words and images for an inter-
net audience, revealing and concealing as
their screens and cameras and wits allow,
without ever confronting their admirers or
detractors in person.
You can see the charismahiki’s paral-
lels with all of us now—the grandma never
off Ravelry, the maven glued to Pinterest.
The temptation to call this another way the
internet has destroyed the order of things
is strong. A famous person should be in
the open air, to risk something in battle,
as Julius Caesar did, and to be touched by
his acolytes, as Jesus was. No?
True for warriors—although famous
gamers might say it’s possible to make
your name and slay Hector from under a
Slanket. True for saviors, then—though the
New Age heroine Marianne Williamson,
also a candidate for president, does much
of her saving of souls using online video.
And if it’s the appearance in the record that
brings a person into existence as famous,
as immortal, how crucial is it that the per-
son even lived in three-dimensional space?
Jesus’ virtues belong to the gospels; Kylie
Jenner’s belong to Instagram.
Ultimately the famous thing is the record
itself, not the specters that pass through it.
YouTube is more renowned than any sin-
gle YouTuber, as there are no YouTubers
when the platform disintegrates. Insta-
gram likewise bestows fame (and filters
and fans) on the beautiful and can banishLeonardo da Vinci agreed with
Young Thug about celebrity being
life’s game-changing apex.