The teenage obsession with fame

In a fascinating article in The Nation entitled  Mirror, Mirror on the Web, Lakshmi Chaudhry brings a razorsharp analysis of this generation's obssesion with fame. His thesis is that Generation Me is more than ever obsessed with becoming a celebrity. The web provides them all the tools to have a greater shot at their 15 minutes of fame. Celebrity has become a goal in itself, rather than the result of talent or accomplishments.

"...the advent of cyber-fame is remarkable in that it is divorced from any significant achievement--farting to the tune of "Jingle Bells," for example, can get you on VH1. While a number of online celebrities are rightly known for doing something (a blogger like Markos Moulitsas, say), and still others have leveraged their virtual success to build lucrative careers (as with the punk-rock group Fall Out Boy), it is no longer necessary to do either in order to be "famous."

Fame is now reduced to its most basic ingredient: public attention. And the attention doesn't have to be positive either, as in the case of the man in Belfast who bit the head off a mouse for a YouTube video".

The author aknowledges that this desire for celebrity is not new, but what's new is the primacy of the desire for celebrity, especially among young people. He underuilds his point with some compelling stas:

• In 1950 12% of teens agreed with the statement "I am an important person". In the 1980s that was already 80% and still rising.
• The Average score on the standard Narcism Personality Inventory test among college teens in 2006 is significantly higher than in 1987.
• A Harris poll conducted in 2000 found that 44 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 believed it was at least somewhat likely that they would be famous for a short period.

The explanation for this soaring desire for public attention and fame has to do with a broader trend in society:

"People want the kind of attention that celebrities receive more than anything else [...]want the recognition, the validation, the sense of having a place in the culture [because] we no longer know where we belong, what we're about or what we should be about." Without any meaningful standard by which to measure our worth, we turn to the public eye for affirmation".

The web offers all the tools this generation needs for self expression: blogs, youtube, MySpace, live spaces, fora, etc...

Interestingly this obsession with self expression would - according to the author - result in an aversion for collective action. That kind of struck me and I think there's an interesting angle to this: It's not because Teens have an aversion for collective action, that they are indifferent to "making a difference". Collective Action in the web2.0 era - allow me to use the word for the sake of argument - is all about creating a synthesis in which self-expression meets a good cause. The enourmous success of the Music For Life campaign by Studio Brussels proves that teens can be mobilised for a very good cause when their contribution can result in a few minutes of instant fame.

Link: The Nation - MIrror, Mirror on the web
Link: Interesting comment by Anastasia Goodstein on Ypulse