Today, I am:
Exhausted About Celebrities In The Parasocial Internet Age
I have said it before:
Why on earth ANYONE would seek internet fame now, knowing what we know, seeing what we've seen, in this era of quasi-relationships online
It is baffling to me. It seems like such a dogshit career, with a ton of work, little reward, and such a massive potential for you to completely eat shit and ruin everything by having your messy flawed human deficiencies magnified by fame, usually by your own doing.
Like, fuck
The spotlight seems like hell even when things are good
This isn't about any one person it is about multiple people for multiple years now
Basically every online creative I still respect has spoken at one point or another about just how fucking AWFUL every part of the job that isn't directly "making the thing" is. The social media presence is a nonstop deluge of hate and creepiness, every upload (depending on platform) is a fight to not get demonitized/fight to keep certain shitty groups from misconstruing your arguments for their purposes/fight to keep your name accredited-- everything has to be a fight for your little online turf
Why would anyone willfully choose that? Maybe 10 years ago when it wasn't as openly discussed how shitty it all is, but j e s u s
who looks at Online now and decides "yeah, yeah that's where I wanna interact with thousands, even millions, all paying way too much attention to me and everything i do or say"
Nope nope nope
@swiff i mean i also wouldn't be surprised if for some people it's being hooked on the rush of having an audience
mention of online harassment groups (vague)
@swiff Not gonna lie, one of the things I'm terrified of as an Online Creative is my work getting suddenly extremely popular somehow overnight, and all the parasocial stuff getting super out of hand - potentially leading to me avoiding working on my creative stuff because of *waves hands vaguely* online things
Alternately, just getting the attention of various online harassment groups =V
These feelings are hard to balance with the desire for recognition of my work lol
@swiff i think part of it is like... for some people, when you're an artist you have to do your art or else like... life just totally sucks. and since being a public figure to some degree means more engagement which can mean enough attention to make your art livable to some degree, a lot of people take that route despite the problems.
my brother talks about this a lot because he's a musician and feels like he's dodged a bullet because he's fine enough working at the grocery store and making music on the side lol