“In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”
What an interesting prediction to make, especially in the 1960s. This quote is often misattributed to Andy Warhol, but it was in fact conceived by Pontus Hultén and Olle Granath and included in a program for Warhol’s 1968 exhibit at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden.
Regardless of who said it, the quote rings true today. Hindsight is 20/20, and in the modern world, this quote has become a representation of the internet and the information age. Because so many media channels exist, there is an opportunity for anyone to achieve fame. If you want it, you can get it. People are interested in people. We’ve entered into the “long-tail” era of celebrity.
However, it begs the questions: what does a society look like full of people who never achieve the level of fame that they desire—or worse—who achieved fame for a short period and then lost it?
Because people are interested in people, there is a dire need for authenticity in the content that influencers create. But I can’t help but feel like sometimes these influencers are oversharing. There is a certain liberation that comes with being fully honest and public about your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. But once it’s out there, it’s out there. There’s no turning back. And if, by chance, your thoughts, feelings, and emotions happen to fall out of the times (which are changing more rapidly by the day, mind you), then you will face the repercussions. Your fame will be cut short, and you will be relegated back to being a nobody.
If I had to make a prediction like Warhol’s program did in 1968, mine would be: “In the future, everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes.”
It’s tough to know if the metaverse and virtual reality will gain enough popularity and take shape in the same way that it’s depicted in films like Ready Player One. However, I have to imagine that there will be some place that people escape to where they don’t have to be themselves. In the past 20 years, the pendulum has swung towards overexposure of the “self,” eliminating a significant portion of our individual privacy and confidentiality; however, the pendulum will swing back the other way, especially when the lack of privacy has damaging effects on a person’s reputation.
Instead of creating a true digital identity (like people have done with Facebook, Instagram, etc.), I expect people to create a false digital identity, one in which they are only known by the name of their pseudonym or avatar. And more importantly, this anonymity will be brief, something that people can enjoy for a period of time and then return to their “real” life.
But by that point, the lines will have blurred. We will no longer feel like we are just one person or identity. But instead, we will have many identities. In some ways, we have already reached that stage; we already play certain “characters” for our social media audiences.
In the same way that Andy Warhol duplicated Marilyn Monroe again and again for his famous Marilyn Diptych, we too will duplicate ourselves into several iterations of identity—some real, and some fake.
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“In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”
What an interesting prediction to make, especially in the 1960s. This quote is often misattributed to Andy Warhol, but it was in fact conceived by Pontus Hultén and Olle Granath and included in a program for Warhol’s 1968 exhibit at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden.
Regardless of who said it, the quote rings true today. Hindsight is 20/20, and in the modern world, this quote has become a representation of the internet and the information age. Because so many media channels exist, there is an opportunity for anyone to achieve fame. If you want it, you can get it. People are interested in people. We’ve entered into the “long-tail” era of celebrity.
However, it begs the questions: what does a society look like full of people who never achieve the level of fame that they desire—or worse—who achieved fame for a short period and then lost it?
Because people are interested in people, there is a dire need for authenticity in the content that influencers create. But I can’t help but feel like sometimes these influencers are oversharing. There is a certain liberation that comes with being fully honest and public about your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. But once it’s out there, it’s out there. There’s no turning back. And if, by chance, your thoughts, feelings, and emotions happen to fall out of the times (which are changing more rapidly by the day, mind you), then you will face the repercussions. Your fame will be cut short, and you will be relegated back to being a nobody.
If I had to make a prediction like Warhol’s program did in 1968, mine would be: “In the future, everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes.”
It’s tough to know if the metaverse and virtual reality will gain enough popularity and take shape in the same way that it’s depicted in films like Ready Player One. However, I have to imagine that there will be some place that people escape to where they don’t have to be themselves. In the past 20 years, the pendulum has swung towards overexposure of the “self,” eliminating a significant portion of our individual privacy and confidentiality; however, the pendulum will swing back the other way, especially when the lack of privacy has damaging effects on a person’s reputation.
Instead of creating a true digital identity (like people have done with Facebook, Instagram, etc.), I expect people to create a false digital identity, one in which they are only known by the name of their pseudonym or avatar. And more importantly, this anonymity will be brief, something that people can enjoy for a period of time and then return to their “real” life.
But by that point, the lines will have blurred. We will no longer feel like we are just one person or identity. But instead, we will have many identities. In some ways, we have already reached that stage; we already play certain “characters” for our social media audiences.
In the same way that Andy Warhol duplicated Marilyn Monroe again and again for his famous Marilyn Diptych, we too will duplicate ourselves into several iterations of identity—some real, and some fake.
