Famous for what?

One wise guy asked a question: What’s the difference between a social media influencer and a philosophy major?

And his answer is this: “The philosophy major needed a degree to be useless.”

Actually, I am sure he is wrong because today, having knowledge of philosophy has become a vital ingredient to do critical thinking in an age of AI-dominated society. Maybe this is the reason why every major AI hyper scaler and tech company has a resident Ph.D working with them.

Now let me poke fun at “influencers” this time.

Somebody asks: How much does an influencer weigh?

Answer: An Instagram. (corny daddy joke)

And here is another corny one: What do you call an influencer with the coronavirus?

Answer? An influencer – but only if it goes viral...

Many young people today aspire to become “Influencers.” And when you ask them why? The honest among them would say they want to make money out of being famous, while others just want to be famous and to be known.

I grew up in a world of radio, television and the occasional glossy magazine. We had famous people, but they were kept at a respectful distance, safely inside the box in the living room.

Today the box is in your pocket, and it is begging for your face. Every platform nudges you along like a gambling machine that managed to talk. You are “getting traction.” You are “gaining engagement.” Keep going, post more and one glorious day, you too will be paid actual money for the noble labor of being looked at.

Money for nothing. Fans for free.

Chasing fame is one of the emptiest pursuits a human being can give his one precious life to. And the wise have been telling us so for a very long time.

Mark Twain said, “Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.” And then he added a line: “On the whole it is better to deserve honors and not have them, than to have them and not deserve them.”

Most fame today is exactly that. Undeserved honor. Which is precisely why it terrifies the people who hold it. Deep down, they are waiting every single day for the crowd to find out.

Four centuries ago, Francis Bacon saw the whole of Instagram coming. “Fame is like a river,” he wrote, “that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.”

The light and the swollen float. The weighty and the solid sink.

Lord Byron, who tasted fame more than most, delivered the verdict: “Fame is the thirst of youth,” he wrote. Which is a gentle way of saying that the hunger for fame is essentially childish. It is what you crave before you have lived enough to know better.

I can vouch for this personally. I have spent decades in front of audiences and cameras, and I will let you in on a secret.

Applause is rented. You never own it. And the rent is due every single morning.

The most useful counsel I ever received on this came from a wise man early in my public life. Do not read your good reviews; do not believe your own PR,” he told me. “Do not bathe in flattery. Seek out your critics instead.”

Because the flatterer wants something from you. The critic, difficult as he is, may actually be telling you the truth.

That advice is simple. Following it is a lifelong wrestling match.

Now here is where my faith speaks, because it must.

Cardinal John Henry Newman warned that “we cannot serve two masters who are enemies to the other.” We cannot chase the world’s praise and God’s praise at the same time. One of them will be disappointed, and we get to choose which.

The Lord Himself said, “Do not do your good deeds to be seen by men.” And Solomon reminded us that “a good name is more desirable than great riches.”

Notice the word. A good name. Not a famous one. A good one.

There is a world of difference between being known and being worth knowing.

So allow me to hand this to the person with the dream of becoming an influencer, and to the rest of us quietly hoping to go viral.

Fame is a vapor. It rises quickly, looks magnificent in the light and disappears the moment the weather changes.

Character, on the other hand, is not a vapor. It is bedrock. It is still standing when the crowd has wandered off to applaud someone younger.

So do not spend your life trying to be famous. Spend it becoming someone whose fame – should it ever arrive uninvited – you actually deserve.

Use your influence to bring something good to people or to the world.

Be worth knowing.

The rest is just weather.

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