#and tumblr is also demotivating because basically nothing i post shows up in search

[marshmallowgoop]

But Do You REALLY Want to Be Internet Famous

A theatre professor of mine once talked at length about YouTube stardom. He said that it’s the dream of a good chunk of young people today.

And I get it, I do. When I first dipped my toes into the world of Internet content creation in my teens, YouTube was never initially a goal... but as the years went by, it became clear that plain-old-oatmeal blogging was falling out of fashion. If I wanted to reach a larger audience online, the way to do it was to kiss text posts goodbye and embrace video editing. A YouTube channel has been on my To Do list for what feels like a millennia.

YouTube, Twitch, and other video-hosting sites are just attractive to people like me—you know, the kind of folks who don’t know how to shut up and want to believe that their opinions are worth listening to. You don’t have to have a degree to YouTube, you don’t have to go through a peer-review process to stream on Twitch, and you can be your own boss in terms of what you want to say and what you want to create. Sure, you’re not gonna have the credibility (nor the stability) of a permanent, “real-deal” career in the field of your choice if online videoing is all you do, but the freedom and flexibility of the pure Internet content creator is appealing.

And, personally, while I sometimes feel I should have pursued academia instead of devoting thousands of hours of my life to this blog, I’m also not particularly interested in being seen only by other academics. I want anyone to be able to interact with my work... and I’m not gonna get that via academic journals.

So, I get it. I wanna YouTube like all the cool kids, too.

But be a YouTube star?

Yeah... can’t say I’m down with that.

The more I Internet, the more being Internet Famous seems appallingly dreadful. When you’re Internet Famous, no matter who you are, there will be people out there who will do anything to slander you. They’ll go back a decade in your Tweet history to find anything that could be even slightly morally suspect. They’ll feel entitled to personal details about you—to your race, your sexuality, your gender identity—and grow angry if you don’t wish to share such private matters that are your own business. They’ll examine every little thing you do as though you are a specimen under their microscope, and I can’t imagine even a day goes by that someone doesn’t throw hate upon you. Maybe being an Internet content creator is freeing, fiercely independent... but being a famous Internet content creator is perhaps anything but. It’s just as scary and restrictive as being famous anyway else.

To those who have known me for a while, it’s no secret that I received my first-ever barrage of anonymous hate last year. These kinds of situations aren’t odd online, of course—in fact, I felt it was quite belated, especially considering my massive array of Unpopular Opinions. I figured it would happen eventually, and I hoped I’d be able to handle it well. I don’t like brushing off any pushback as unwarranted, I’m always open to criticism, and I know answering rudeness with rudeness doesn’t help things. I know that when these things happen, people often sigh at the person receiving the backlash and say, “Well, you absolutely deserve to be called out for those Bad Takes. If you’d just apologize and be better, you wouldn’t have to deal with the abuse.”

Spoilers: I did not handle any of my own situation well. At all. But I did a lot “right.” I apologized profusely for speaking poorly. I devoted hours to composing a new essay to better explain myself and make amends. I tried so hard to be better, more thoughtful, more considerate.

And none of it mattered. A little sleuthing revealed that my harassers were apparently a group of friends who had “meant it at first,” but later found it a fun game. It was a joy to torture me and drag me down. My apologies didn’t matter, and my intentions were worth less than a smashed candy bar on a grocery store bargain rack.

And perhaps I had known it before, but it didn’t fully dawn on me until that moment that it literally does not matter what you do. If there’s a world of people watching, there will always be someone who feels you deserve to be hated and abused. There will always be someone who is disgusted by your mere existence. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

The hate has stopped for me. But its effects are far from gone. I’m suspicious of all anonymous compliments in my inbox. Is it just those same people, prepared to laugh at me for believing their lies? I’m afraid to trust anything or anyone. My heart pounds every time I get a new mail. What did I do wrong this time? I’m scared and exhausted. And I’ve only received about 50 anonymous hate messages in my entire time of being an Internet content creator.

So, how can it feel to have my experiences multiplied by 10? 100? 1,000? 10,000? How can it feel to deal with what I dealt with for a few months every single day? 

Maybe you grow numb to it. Maybe it gets better with time. Maybe the support you receive outweighs the hate so much that it’s all worth it to you.

But as for me? Internet fame is a horrifying goal I could only dream of reaching in the first place... and I don’t think I ever want to reach that dream. Does anyone, truly?

Well, you’re stronger than me if you do.

Because I’d love to attract a wider audience and impact more people, and I’m always working to improve so that I can do so. But the very idea of getting to Internet Famous levels scares the crap out of me. It’s not at all a dream in my eyes—it’s a nightmare.