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Reasons not to become famous

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Re: Reasons not to become famous

#41

Post by weinzierl »

speedgoose wrote: post #9
Expez wrote: post #6

The post has a good quote from Bill Murray: > I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: ‘try being rich first.’ See if that doesn’t cover most of it. There’s not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job. . . . The only good thing about fame is that I’ve gotten out of a couple of spee…

Why trying to become rich? Once you have enough money to have a great quality of life without stress, having more money isn't improving much your happiness. Sometimes it makes it worse. However trying to become rich can be very difficult, tiresome, and disappointing.

> However trying to become rich can be very difficult, tiresome, and disappointing.

Some people enjoy making money regardless how much wealth they already have.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#42

Post by PudgePacket »

molteanu wrote: post #4

I honestly thought this is bad writing. It jumps from one idea to the next without bringing any of them to the conclusion. One quote too many, maybe? And too many paragraphs that are meant to catch and arounse the reader's interest? I guess this is the style of writing needed to catch the attention of millions of followers. Am I mistaken? I've stopped reading this after 5 minutes. I've reallly tried, though. Edit: Do…

You're probably getting voted down because you're not really adding anything valuable to the discussion.

If you think the submitted article is bad just vote it down and move on.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#43

Post by tazjin »

I opened this on a computer without an adblocker installed (yeah, my mistake), and a minute or so into reading the article it suddenly pops up a full-screen ad to buy this guy's book. That's on the same level of annoying as autoplaying videos imo.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#45

Post by brownbat »

adventured wrote: post #32
speedgoose wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why trying to become rich? Once you have enough money to have a great quality of life without stress, having more money isn't improving much your happiness. Sometimes it makes it worse. However trying to become rich can be very difficult, tiresome, and disappointing.

> Why trying to become rich? Because there is an unlimited number of things you can do with it. You're limited only by time and your imagination. I've never understood the premise I'm responding to, it doesn't make sense, unless a person has zero ambition and zero creativity - and I don't think that's true of anyone. I could never have enough money. I could never run out of good things to use it on. Give me $100 tril…

Yeah, the DOT has some value to baseline effectiveness of programs: if they have $30,000 they can improve some intersection or stretch of highway and save one life a year. They can always turn extra cash into lives saved, so they use that to measure the effectiveness of spending. (Preventing malaria deaths is much much cheaper, maybe the conversion rate should be lower, but let's go with 30k for now.)

If someone says they don't want $30k because they live comfortably, even though they could immediately donate it to GiveWell, it's like saying they don't value saving other lives because their life is fine.

Substitute in anything else you value. You could sponsor modern art competitions, or film preservation, or buy land for ecological preservation, or help fund policy research on key issues from think tanks...

People reflexively associate money with consumptive hedonism, so it can seem like a negative, but it can also support almost any value you have.

Money can build you and tacky gold lined apartment and buy you a loud sports car, but money can also cure the sick, feed the hungry, and house the homeless.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#46

Post by YorickPeterse »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #14

Hypothesis: On twitter, when your follower count exceeds the number you're following, you become a little nutty. I've noticed this odd trend where if people gain a lot of twitter followers, then often their views become reinforced to the point that outsiders look at their tweets and wonder what happened to make them express such ideas. But there's bias here: for tweets like these to be noticed, they need to be seen.…

> Hypothesis: On twitter, when your follower count exceeds the number you're following, you become a little nutty.

I follow 8 people, and have 1029 followers. Following this hypothesis, I would be batshit crazy. I don't think this is a very good hypothesis.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#47

Post by ehnto »

tazjin wrote: post #43

I opened this on a computer without an adblocker installed (yeah, my mistake), and a minute or so into reading the article it suddenly pops up a full-screen ad to buy this guy's book. That's on the same level of annoying as autoplaying videos imo.

Ah, the humble pop up. I don't see them so much anymore, but I also don't visit many websites that would do that anymore. It's always startling, sometimes it can take a good minute just to get through the onslaught of popups, popovers, chat widgets and permissions requests just to see the article.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#48

Post by nefitty »

keiferski wrote: post #21

I’ve always thought being famous with a pseudonymous name but an anonymous appearance and legal name is the best of both scenarios. Someone like Bansky or Daft Punk, for example. Everyone knows your artist name and your work, but virtually no one recognizes you on the street and you can check into hotels or use your real name without most people noticing.

Is the point that you get your work recognized, instead of your “self”?

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#49

Post by keiferski »

nefitty wrote: post #48
keiferski wrote: post #21

I’ve always thought being famous with a pseudonymous name but an anonymous appearance and legal name is the best of both scenarios. Someone like Bansky or Daft Punk, for example. Everyone knows your artist name and your work, but virtually no one recognizes you on the street and you can check into hotels or use your real name without most people noticing.

Is the point that you get your work recognized, instead of your “self”?

Depends on where you draw the line between work and self, I guess.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#50

Post by engineeringwoke »

adventured wrote: post #32
speedgoose wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why trying to become rich? Once you have enough money to have a great quality of life without stress, having more money isn't improving much your happiness. Sometimes it makes it worse. However trying to become rich can be very difficult, tiresome, and disappointing.

> Why trying to become rich? Because there is an unlimited number of things you can do with it. You're limited only by time and your imagination. I've never understood the premise I'm responding to, it doesn't make sense, unless a person has zero ambition and zero creativity - and I don't think that's true of anyone. I could never have enough money. I could never run out of good things to use it on. Give me $100 tril…

The structure of this comment gives the (very American) idea that you want to become rich so you can save the world. You really just want power.
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