On the Internet, We’re Always Famous

The pressure to perform and live up to the expectations of others is not a new social phenomenon — nor a bad one. **^^But the way it manifests at the internet’s global scale increases its intensity tenfold — especially for young people. The goal is no longer to simply live up to the high expectations of your parents and peers — online you could be ... See more

Many seem to believe fame is fun until it’s the big, bad, alienating kind, but I’d argue the challenges start at the beginning—with any modicum of attention online, say—and scale from there. Finding peace, I think, requires a certain trepidation around your desire to be seen as exceptional. I saw this idea captured perfectly the other day, by the a... See more

In our conversation, Nadia mentioned the classic piece “Status as a service” by Eugene Wei that details how Twitter functions (or functioned) as a giant status-seeking engine. This piece, Nadia proposed, crystalized the era of the internet when people were optimizing for likes and cultural cache in a game that felt novel and exciting. Something ess... See more