Why is there widespread obsession with reality TV, with social media, and with rock and movie stars? What’s the reason some people reshape their bodies through cosmetic surgery to mimic people they idolize? * Have we finally reaped the crop of existential thinking that grew from the seeds planted by Sartre? Have we emplaced in our psyches twentieth-century anxiety that arose from a feeling of meaninglessness? Is our answer to nihilism a continuing search for approval based on imitation? Is acknowledgement by others the ultimate mechanism that establishes personal meaning?
If President John Tyler were around today, here’s what he would post on Twitter: “Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette—the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.” Maybe he was thinking of the Whig leader and editor of the Albany Evening Journal, Thurlow Weed, when he said that. Tweed had called Tyler a “poor, miserable, despised imbecile.” Or, maybe Tyler was just stating the obvious, that popularity is a wheel like fortune. As just about every popular person discovers, for each idolater, there’s an equal and similarly intense iconoclast. That iconoclast is the reason popularity is like a coquette.
The late teen idol Tab Hunter (d. 2018 at 86) once said, “I don't care whether people like me or dislike me. I'm not on earth to win a popularity contest. I'm here to be the best human being I possibly can be.” Of course, we could debate the meaning of “best human being,” but Hunter’s statement reveals a fundamental dichotomy in the way humans find identity and meaning. The divide seems always to be between those whose identities are imitations and those whose identities are unique because they are homegrown.
“No,” you say. “Such either/or thinking misses the grey areas.” Then you add, “All of us imitate to some extent because all of us have matured under the influences of others. Sure, some people seem a bit more ‘different,’ but even they have their influences. Remember Dylan Thomas’s line ‘After the first death, there is no other’? We could substitute person for death here. Or, we could provide an analog from the biological principle ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’: All of us reflect the world of our development; all reflect the combined personalities of others. We imitate not necessarily because we seek popularity—though that is a part of it—but because we cannot divorce ourselves completely from the models of humanity we acquired through simple inculcation and the heritage of preprogramed neurons.” And finally, you add, “I’m not on social media because I seek my identity through popularity. Your implication that anyone who appears frequently on social media is a lost soul is false.”
That insight by you, dear Reader, is why I like to have these conversations. I will grant that not every outreach is a cry for popularity. But you might entertain the assessment that many outreaches are. Regardless of what Tab Hunter wrote—and he probably wrote it sincerely—he made a career in entertainment, a profession that judges success on popularity. Having been highly popular, he had the luxury of reflecting on what a lack of popularity among the young means as his jobs in entertainment waned with his increasing age. Like many other once-highly-popular entertainers, he also saw the downside of popularity, namely, the lack of privacy and the fall from grace that seems inevitable for anyone who peaks in fame at a young age. It seems natural for more mature people to reassess what is ‘important. If we take late heartthrob at his word, Tab Hunter acknowledged that being popular pales in contrast to being “the best human being.”
*Bruk, Diana. “Man undergoes 23 surgeries to look like Superman.” Cosmopolitan.com. Online at https://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/news/a42649/this-man-got-23-surgeries-to-look-like-superman/ Accessed on January 3, 2018. “Unbelievable!” you say. No, not really. Check out the web for stories about people like Lacey Wildd, who underwent 12 breast augmentation surgeries and other surgeries because, as she said, “I want to be an adult Barbie, like the extreme Barbie.” So, not only do we see people wanting “to be” very much the clone of someone they idolize, but we also see people seeking to become clones of fictional characters like Superman and Barbie.
If President John Tyler were around today, here’s what he would post on Twitter: “Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette—the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.” Maybe he was thinking of the Whig leader and editor of the Albany Evening Journal, Thurlow Weed, when he said that. Tweed had called Tyler a “poor, miserable, despised imbecile.” Or, maybe Tyler was just stating the obvious, that popularity is a wheel like fortune. As just about every popular person discovers, for each idolater, there’s an equal and similarly intense iconoclast. That iconoclast is the reason popularity is like a coquette.
The late teen idol Tab Hunter (d. 2018 at 86) once said, “I don't care whether people like me or dislike me. I'm not on earth to win a popularity contest. I'm here to be the best human being I possibly can be.” Of course, we could debate the meaning of “best human being,” but Hunter’s statement reveals a fundamental dichotomy in the way humans find identity and meaning. The divide seems always to be between those whose identities are imitations and those whose identities are unique because they are homegrown.
“No,” you say. “Such either/or thinking misses the grey areas.” Then you add, “All of us imitate to some extent because all of us have matured under the influences of others. Sure, some people seem a bit more ‘different,’ but even they have their influences. Remember Dylan Thomas’s line ‘After the first death, there is no other’? We could substitute person for death here. Or, we could provide an analog from the biological principle ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’: All of us reflect the world of our development; all reflect the combined personalities of others. We imitate not necessarily because we seek popularity—though that is a part of it—but because we cannot divorce ourselves completely from the models of humanity we acquired through simple inculcation and the heritage of preprogramed neurons.” And finally, you add, “I’m not on social media because I seek my identity through popularity. Your implication that anyone who appears frequently on social media is a lost soul is false.”
That insight by you, dear Reader, is why I like to have these conversations. I will grant that not every outreach is a cry for popularity. But you might entertain the assessment that many outreaches are. Regardless of what Tab Hunter wrote—and he probably wrote it sincerely—he made a career in entertainment, a profession that judges success on popularity. Having been highly popular, he had the luxury of reflecting on what a lack of popularity among the young means as his jobs in entertainment waned with his increasing age. Like many other once-highly-popular entertainers, he also saw the downside of popularity, namely, the lack of privacy and the fall from grace that seems inevitable for anyone who peaks in fame at a young age. It seems natural for more mature people to reassess what is ‘important. If we take late heartthrob at his word, Tab Hunter acknowledged that being popular pales in contrast to being “the best human being.”
*Bruk, Diana. “Man undergoes 23 surgeries to look like Superman.” Cosmopolitan.com. Online at https://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/news/a42649/this-man-got-23-surgeries-to-look-like-superman/ Accessed on January 3, 2018. “Unbelievable!” you say. No, not really. Check out the web for stories about people like Lacey Wildd, who underwent 12 breast augmentation surgeries and other surgeries because, as she said, “I want to be an adult Barbie, like the extreme Barbie.” So, not only do we see people wanting “to be” very much the clone of someone they idolize, but we also see people seeking to become clones of fictional characters like Superman and Barbie.
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