Monday, February 20, 2012

Notoriety

First I'd like to thank Earl from Just a Thought for his blog award. This is his blog and I'll post 5 picks of my own once I narrow them down.

This provides me with an excellent opportunity to talk about notoriety and the attention seekers, the quiet heroes deserving of acknowledgement yet so very rarely get it. Everyone likes to get noticed, and most people seek out their 5 minutes of fame and then try to extend it as long as they can. So often though people strive for it and never achieve or it burns out so quickly thus the 5 minutes holds true. There are some however who's 5 minutes are so powerful and profound that they change the world and become known forever. A speech by Severn Suzuki delivered to the UN on global warming for example did change the worlds views on renewable energy and for that she will in some way always be known. Though it's sad to say that 20 years later nothing has changed in spite of her efforts.
Some powerful names even if you can't place them you'll always know them, simply because of their short time in the spotlight in which they shined brighter than the light itself or were so dark that the light seemed to be pointed at a void. For an example Richard Kuklinski whom for some reason I remembered as Jonathan but apparently I was quite wrong. If you don't immediately recall or didn't know to begin with he was known as "the iceman" and that may ring a few serial killer bells. In fact it's more likely that you'll remember 50 different serial killers names before you can remember every president of the US. Every once in a while you'll hear the name of a missing child from years ago because of how shocking or mysterious it was. You may remember a scientist like Marie Curie, or Oppenheimer, Fowler, Heisenberg, and yet have no idea why you know them.

This whole thing leads me to question why, even though we are obviously social beings, we desire notoriety so much. It's amazing what some people will do to get noticed. It's equally amazing how we can completely ignore something deserving of our attention. Without rambling I'll leave to you question the value we place on popularity. We used to be famous for skills and abilities, now it's simply a matter of how well known you are regardless of talent. I'll use the hiltons and kardashians as examples, and I honestly don't know the first or last thing about either and could care less, yet somehow I've managed to hear about their epic levels of stupidity and somehow they're insanely popular for absolutely no reason. Again pointing to being known for being famous vs being famous for being known.

4 comments:

  1. i havnt done mine yet either.

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  2. Lol, I'm not Zyu. May name's Earl mate, but it's an honest mistake I'm sure lol.

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    1. Plus in response to your main post.

      I think people like their "ill gotten" fame more than when they have to work for it. Plus the media show people that have absolutely no reason to being noticed and make it a big deal. Somehow Kim Kardashian's FAT ARSE is more important than Iran being threatened like Iraq and Afghanistan were.

      Like I said, something ill gotten is more appealing to people, because it gives a sense of taboo and forbidden. in a way it makes it more fun. With that comes power, "perceived" or "assumed" power more like but it's still power to the uneducated masses.

      I came to a realisation one time. If Obama is just a man, why do we place him in such high a pedestal where the word "president" is just a title. People assume that he has power just because he is labelled as the "president". If the people labelled him as president then they have the power to take that away from him.

      /endrant

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  3. I'm not sure where I fit on this spectrum. Sure I want to be noticed but I'd rather be known under a pseudonym so I could live my actual life in peace and people could still interact with me without bias.

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