Do you want to be famous?
February 6, 2007
I’m in Hong Kong and my wife and Children are out here with me. When we walk on the streets with my daughter sitting on my shoulders many people stare and point. Over the weekend we went to a beach and people were pointing their camera and taking photos of her. None more so than the mainland Chinese in their coach parties. It’s not every day they see a blond three year old with a riot of curly blond hair. And it bothers me. Who are they to take pictures of my children. Some peope ask and I generally refuse. I begin to get a feel for what I might me like to be a celebrity. There is however, a lack of consistency in my approach. Why will I not let the Chinese tourists take photos, yet I post my own on Flickr for all the world to see? My rationale for Flickr is to let family members to see our pictures, but they are in the public domain.
We live in (the UK) a world where 1 in 7 teenagers wants to “be famous” when they grow up. Not “be rich” as is used to be - there was an implication of effort and graft in that statement, no-one got rich by doing nothing at all. But now it is possible to get rich by being talentless and doing nothing but being on a reality TV show. A sad state of affairs I feel. And anyway, who would want to be famous, to have random people pointing at you and sticking their camera phones in your face? I certainly didn’t like my brief experience of that.
But then I must wonder. With social networking is there an element of all of us wanting to become famous? I’m broadcasting to the world who I am via flickr, through my blog (and I watch how many subscribers I have and strive for a higher ranking within technorati). I look at google analytics to see who is visiting my site (Hello Hanoi, Singapore, Kuopio and Buffalo). I increase my professional network on Linkedin. Maybe I put my videos of myself on Youtube or MySpace. It is all about creating a personal cult of fame. Maybe I don’t like the TV version of it, but I think that on the web I’m hooked. I do want to be famous. Grrrrrrr.
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February 6th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Not sure I understand the reasoning behind refusing to be photographed - it’s not like anyone’s stealing your precious photons, anyway. Could you elaborate on that a bit?
February 6th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Good question. Three points come to mind, none of which specifically is my reasoning, more a combination of them…
If someone came up to you on the street and asked to take your photograph, would you say yes? Would you question their motives?
(OK, it depends, so maybe they are curious, they ask nicely, you get a good feel about them. you say yes. They are gruff and rude, you say no).
What are they going to do with that photograph?
Something about being British and a cultural hang-up about personal space?
After a while it gets really tiresome having people ask / photograph you. I’m a tourist, not the attraction
February 7th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Well actually I have seen lots of Westerners do the same thing in Asia. Whenever they see someone in colorful ethnic clothes, they normally don’t bother to ask and happily click pictures away or worse yet shoot videos with their handy-cams (and before you know the videos will be on Youtube). People normally don’t mind their picture taken by a harmless tourist but if a local guy does the same thing, they get alert because now it has to do with some motive. I guess the important point here is as long as one of the parties is foreign, it is considered to be acceptable to take a picture