Don't we ALL want a little attention?
Attention as an absolute, internet virality, and the burgeoning fear of being publicly humiliated
I imagine a writer picking a topic they learnt about two days ago. They see certain words filter in and out of their timeline’s consciousness, words like “wunderkind” and “tastemakers” and “the cultural experience” becoming the go-to triggers in teasing excerpts for the writer’s longer scroll of pixelated letters that amount to—wait, what did it amount to? These words have little to no impact on the writer because they’re working through years of unresolved trauma in the medium of a 3500 word essay but for some unknowable reason, a reason not at all pertaining to their hunger for being seen by other literary peers, they drop all their current projects as though the words themselves are burning holes through their hands. No one wants to read your heartfelt piece of shit. Write something relevant or we’ll shelve you.
Attention is described so often as a negative thing when really it’s part and parcel of the human experience. We allocate accordingly to the things required to survive; the health of your teeth, your child (if you have one of those), taking the time out of your day to read a book you’ve yet to finish, or watch a movie you’ve been meaning to see. If those things aren’t shamed for needing attention, then why are we?
The assumption stems from this belief that once you’re old enough, the only attention owed to you is by the people you can pay. This irony is quite clear once you consider almost all the arguments leading with this are started simply for the sake of attention. Twitter bots are baiting you in with tweets about friendships being transactional, podcasts are reeling you in with 50/50 relationship debates, and worst of all, content is now king. I do believe there’s beauty in being able to foster a connection through content, being able to create and curate space for a world of interests. That’s cool! No harm there. But content, like I mentioned, is tailored to finding the easiest way to make people argue.
Attention is not an absolute and instead we have to fight tooth and nail for it to truly stick, a point emphasised further by the beauty that is brainrot. We’re encouraged to use as little brain power as possible when consuming content, forgoing any sort of intellectual conversation for an iota of clout or buzz, a tactic that even films are adopting, creating ideas rather than fleshed out movies.
It’s unfortunate that in the age of the internet’s most prosperous time of technology, it’s being used to dumb down anyone that’s a little bit willing to participate in rage bait content. But outside of that, outside of the buzzwords and the ai bots, are the people made of flesh and bones doing the exact same thing.
If we think back to the first resurgence of the TikTok it girl, the list is very white and very rich. You can imagine me, entering my supposedly roaring 20s realising that once again, I am not the standard. Although now, most of my timelines consist of black women and brainrot; the perfect combination. But the thing about algorithms is that they love to show you shit you didn’t ask to see. What’s worse is that they’ll push the content of whiter, skinner women to boost followings, whilst the content of a less “socially desirable” person doing the exact same thing is pushed only to garner reproachable comments. The same can be said for people of colour and the lack of moderation for racism, anti semitism, but curiously, a black man stating his blackness is deemed as“inappropriate”.
I’ve made my peace with not being the standard (kind of) But regardless it’s difficult to ignore that even the algorithm is working against you. Pretty politics have shown us time and time again that there’s always going to be a limit for people who are not the standard, especially women. I’d seen this all throughout my childhood and you can imagine the harm a teenage girl brings upon herself to fit in. You can also imagine the bitterness.
In my teenage years I was a raging pick me. Boys I liked never liked me and, as both a fortunate and unfortunate experience, I went to predominantly white schools. The process of reattaching your self worth once it’s stripped away is tasking, especially because I was blaming other girls around me instead of the boys. As though any girl had a choice of being desired. I grossly thought of seducing older men because that felt necessary? For some reason? I’d been desperate enough to wish that I was the one being looked at, regardless of the age of men that were looking at me.
Wanting attention was a silent affair, obviously, and the resentment only piled upon itself, tipping towards an impending crash out towards any girl that was smaller, skinner, and lighter than me. It was frustrating because most of these girls were my friends and I can say with all my heart that they are beautiful, kind women, wherever they are now. I can also say that I recognise what kind of attention is necessary, and what is due for purging. In a way it’s quite tedious to write this because whilst I understand what will trigger me and what won’t, on a whole it’s easier and all the while harder to discern the attention economy because nothing has nuance and yet almost every piece of internet culture we’ve seen rise to the occasion has been picked due to a set of circumstance that is always somehow altered time after time.
The internet has been unexplainable since its inception no matter how simple. The concept of being able to see another person’s life through a tiny screen is unthinkable. (Showing this to Victorian child, blah blah blah you know how the saying goes)
It’s easy to go viral in the internet age, made easier by TikTok, but how do people stay in that limelight? And why can’t it be me?
For a long time I’ve wondered about the ways in which people go viral. Natural interest? Paid ads? Being extremely lucky? Most of the time I imagine a modicum of each is placed into a vat and tossed around until something slithers out and an internet star is born.
It’s a peremptory process, this reaching into the ether and pulling out a new it girl or white boy of the month that we must like for a few months until someone is brave enough to say how this male celebrity looked like a rat and someone in the comments thought the same thing the whole time. Not to be on the side of these celebrities but, it is insane what people will say just because it’s on the internet. As we’ve established nothing is ever truly hidden, and the choosing ceremony of these people can often seem like big brother or some shit, just waiting with bated breath to see if the chosen ones will fail the masses.
The thing I fear most about this sort of choice is that when you haven been the one to orchestrate it, the mass opinion of you can’t be controlled and even if you did place all the puzzle pieces in the right place, people might hate you more for existing. Being a hater doesn’t need rationale, only the fervour of a straight white man that hates women. It’s not guaranteed that your it girl status will secure the right attention, and then what do you do? Do you debase yourself and give into the necessary humiliation rituals that most people hungry for fame partake in? Do you leave the public eye, resort to a life of quiet gardening in your cute little cottage that your daddy pays for? Sorry, the bitterness jumped out for a second.
During my era of wanting to be picked, I did whatever I could to become the kind of it girl I used to stalk. I would buy those easily breakable bar glasses and drink so much coffee in one day and be surprised when my body rejects it. I’d do these stupid pilates workouts that would make me feel good for three hours. I’d journal sparsely and post about it on TikTok. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these things, in fact I still do some of them in moderation, but when something trends, this something being the perfectly curated life of a skinny white woman, is it not natural that as an attention whore I would do the same? The results may vary, yes, but why are my results so astoundingly low compared to hers?
It might seem as though the people being chosen are simply plucked from the lot but the shiniest bulb catches the eye. How we pick these popular influencers is often purely an aspirational desire to look and feel the same, so wanting the attention they have is not insane to imagine, but how much attention are we really fit to handle?
Being loved by your audience is a flimsy thing. Of course, this is a sentiment I have as a person with no audience so I’m speaking only from the madness I see day to day, but there is truly no love more conditional than that of a fan. People are endlessly fickle with their support on the basis of what you can do for them, despite whether or not a person they support is morally good. Doja Cat has done some questionable things and yet her fan base grows and grows without fail. And whilst I agree that the insurgence of celebrities being ripped to shreds for not wanting to be treated like dancing monkeys is insane, I also think that there’s much to be said about the way influencers act once they realise the attention is not, in fact, absolute and will crash down on them the second something in the air shifts.
Could I comfortably blame them for complaining about the onslaught of hateful scrutiny disguised as a core tenant of fame? No. It’d be easy to, You wanted to be famous and now you’re bitching about it? You’re not cut out for this. But this assumption that’s placed upon “overnight celebrities” to have immediate star power and a ready made shield to ward off death threats is quite literally insane. The internet, pertaining how most of Gen Z have grow up with it, forces everyone into the eye of The Camera, creating influencers where there are none and cringy normies where there were once powerhouse celebrities. In many cases the people we’ve made famous are still just people, trying somehow to stay true to what they love and trying not to get cancelled, and the expectation that someone should know how to navigate the erratic revolver of fame is decidedly unfair.
Fame, despite its haphazard ruling, is a very real thing. A measurable metric that’s surpassed its limits whilst simultaneously devolving into degeneracy every decade. Those that used to be famous now cling to the newer, shiner algorithms that they can’t adhere to as easily as their successors, and the successors themselves are slowly falling into the trap laid out by the fact of time. But you no longer need to have the prerequisite of being a celebrity to gain attention. What’s worse is that the people vying for fame are no longer celebrities, but regular people and children with absolutely too much tech exposure.
As the cycle of attention continues in this irregular whirlwind, we have no idea if The Next Big Thing is going to be somebody’s tax paying father or a hyperactive twelve year old. No one really knows what social media will look like in the next five years and whether that’s a good or bad, it’s comforting to some degree. Rules can be changed, people can hopefully find some individuality in the sea of sameness and despite pop culture’s lack of serious behaviour, there’s a desire to be seen somewhere in all of us.