Fame puts you there where things are hollow

This morn­ing, I woke up, wiped the sleep from my blood­shot eyes, and decided that I was going to be fam­ous. Now. Now I’m fam­ous. There. I became fam­ous in the same moment that I typed the word ‘now’. At this pre­cise point in time, right this minute, I am a legend. A legend in my own life­time. My own lunch­time. It feels won­der­ful. You can touch me if you wish. I’ll let you touch me. I’ll let you breathe my rar­efied air. The air that I breathe isn’t the same as your air. It’s bet­ter. It’s purer and cleaner. Because I’m now famous.

Back in the real world — or is it the inter­net world? I can no longer tell the dif­fer­ence — a cult writer called Tao Lin, who has achieved con­sid­er­able fame and notori­ety on the web, has (appar­ently) sold his Myspace account on eBay for $8,100.

In 1968, Andy War­hol said: “In the future, every­one will be world-famous for fif­teen minutes”. Never one to know­ingly under­sell him­self or his own artistic and philo­soph­ical state­ments, by 1979 he believed that his crys­tal ball-gazing had already come to pass: “My pre­dic­tion from the six­ties finally came true: in the future every­one will be fam­ous for fif­teen minutes”.

That’s £5,413., if you’re frantic­ally try­ing to get your head round the cur­rency con­ver­sion in these fin­an­cially cata­strophic times.

Rub­bish. I remem­ber 1979 — albeit only via the memor­ies that I’m able to dredge up from the mind of a chubby eight year-old boy — and it was con­sid­er­ably more dif­fi­cult to be fam­ous back then. David Bowie was a super­star in 1979; my uncle Percy, who sang to flat-capped blokes and their flowery-skirted wives on Sunday after­noons at his local work­ing mens’ club, was not.

The ‘lucky’ win­ning bid­der received access to Tao Lin’s 1,500-plus Myspace ‘friends’.

Thirty years later, how­ever, my uncle Percy could be fam­ous if he chose to be. He could ask his friend Hilda — “I may be eighty-six years young, but I’m still sprightly on these pins” — to bring her grandson’s hand­held cam­corder down to the care home and record him weakly dron­ing war­time sin­galong favour­ites to the assembled drib­bling pen­sion­ers. Uploaded onto his own You­tube chan­nel, I have no doubt that within days Percy would be receiv­ing more views, embeds and bone-headed com­ments than all the avail­able David Bowie clips on the time-wasting, video-sharing site. This is a fact. You know I’m right. Don’t even dare to dis­agree with me.

[Please note the ironic quo­ta­tion marks scattered through­out this incis­ive italicised com­ment­ary. Indeed, please note all the ironic quo­ta­tion marks, since they are an even more ironic styl­istic ref­er­ence to the writer in ques­tion, although you might not real­ise it if you don’t know the work of Tao Lin. Which means that I had to explain the joke. Which means that I have just entirely deval­ued it. Killed it. Made it lack all humour what­so­ever. I can feel my lifeblood slip­ping away as I type this.]

Sadly, my poor uncle Percy will never be fam­ous. He died some­time in the mid-1980s, before the inter­net came into all our homes. Thirty years on from being a singing sen­sa­tion glimpsed only by a select but inebri­ated few (and their dogs), he is so extremely unmem­or­able that I can’t even remem­ber the exact year in which he died. Or what he looked like. In fact, I could prob­ably tell you more about Andy War­hol, whom I never met.

The pos­sibly men­tally unbal­anced new owner of this Myspace account is also entitled to some­where between 0.5 — 5% of Tao Lin’s “inter­net presence/identity”. Whatever that means.

If only War­hol had been able to fore­see the tar­nished golden age of the inter­net, skulk­ing just around the corner with its tempt­ing offers of free hard­core por­no­graphy and kit­ten videos hid­den under its filthy trench­coat, I have no doubt that his head would have exploded, caus­ing his sig­na­ture white mop of hair to shoot six feet into the air and land on an unsus­pect­ing passer-by. That unfor­tu­nate but hugely com­ical moment would also be avail­able on You­tube, thus allow­ing me to embed it below for your enter­tain­ment. The passer-by would gain world­wide atten­tion and, prov­ing Warhol’s the­ory, would go on to be fam­ous for fif­teen minutes.

At this point, I will freely admit that I have never read a Tao Lin book, poem, or indeed any of his writ­ing. Nor have I any par­tic­u­lar desire to do so. I am just com­ment­ing on the ridicu­lous situ­ation, rather than any lit­er­ary mer­its of the author himself.

Seven para­graphs into this ill-considered diatribe and I remain fam­ous, whilst you remain the obed­i­ent Little People read­ing my words. Don’t you feel hon­oured? You can still touch me too, if you like. Please. Please touch me. Touch me. Just there. There. That’s the spot. There. Fuck. Yes. That’s it. Oh. Ohhh.

I sus­pect that only a small per­cent­age of my circle of ‘inter­net friends’ know or even care who Tao Lin is.

But why am I fam­ous? Why? I’m fam­ous because I’m on the inter­net. I write a blog on the inter­net. I have writ­ten a blog on the inter­net since Octo­ber 2000. Nearly nine years. That’s a lot longer than fif­teen pathetic minutes, Mr War­hol. My site is linked in more than a few places on the web. I have read­ers. I have stalk­ers. I have met other people through the inter­net who also have read­ers and stalk­ers. We are all fam­ous. All of us. Some­times we meet up in our secret cabal of exclus­ive inter­net fame, going in dis­guise and step­ping through the hordes of paparazzi snap­pers des­per­ate to get pic­tures of us. We sit around dis­cuss­ing the stresses and strains of being so bloody fam­ous. Later in the even­ing, when we’ve drunk as much cham­pagne as we can stom­ach and vomited caviar into a bucket, we usu­ally call up three or four ardent fans who are only too pleased to come over and allow us to snort cocaine off their bare ass cheeks, in return for an auto­graph scrawled across their tender young breasts. Or a men­tion on our blogs. Or a free copy of our latest chapbook.

Any­one else with whom I come into con­tact on a daily basis would prob­ably greet the name Tao Lin with a blank stare, a slack-jawed open mouth, and a dis­in­ter­ested mumble of “Huh?”

Some­times, in the dark moments, I am plagued by insec­ur­ity. I feel that the impos­ing edi­fice of fame I have con­struc­ted for myself out of the vir­tual atten­tion that you, the Little People, so lav­ish upon me is slip­ping into the sand, fall­ing back into its feeble found­a­tions. That’s when I’m in the real world, though; the real world where, I’m ashamed to admit, my extraordin­ary inter­net fame means noth­ing. Not a thing.

But I don’t plan to embar­rass myself by ask­ing these people. They think I’m strange enough already, so I don’t wish to con­firm all their worst fears about my odd behaviour.

It’s hard to believe, but there are those in my life — acquaint­ances, col­leagues, rel­at­ives — for whom the inter­net is merely some­where they go to send emails, browse the news, buy gro­cer­ies, maybe down­load some music, pos­sibly watch kit­ten videos, and occa­sion­ally bleakly mas­turb­ate over sweaty, grunt­ing por­no­graphy. Their lack of inter­net know­ledge means that, tra­gic­ally, they fail to appre­ci­ate that even though I con­tinue to do entirely nor­mal things like go to the office, pay house­hold bills, do the washing-up and visit the bath­room to excrete the same waste products as every other human being, I am dif­fer­ent. I am more import­ant. I am famous.

Instead, I will carry out a straw poll on Tao Lin’s unques­tion­ably immense world­wide fame via those author­it­at­ive fonts of all know­ledge known as Lon­don cab drivers.

I con­fess that I find myself at a com­plete loss about what to do with such people. They are ruin­ing my nat­ural karma. Should I refuse to speak to them? Should I delete them from my life? Should I remain indoors and live only on the inter­net for ever more, so that I can remain in my closeted world of vir­tual online fame? Or should I list their names here — each and every one of their sad, sorry, worth­less iden­tit­ies — so that you can spew blind hatred at them into the com­ments fol­low­ing these words, whilst sim­ul­tan­eously mas­sa­ging my ego to the point of nox­ious orgasm? I don’t know. I just don’t know any more.

I will, of course, report back on my find­ings. Pos­sibly. If I’ve not been incar­cer­ated for my own safety.

Before my tower­ing self-belief over­whelms all of us, I wish to make clear that I am not entirely deluded. I know that there still exist some dis­tant corners of the web where the vir­tual cit­izens have not fallen under my spell. They fail to be cap­tiv­ated by my obscure writ­ings, and are not reduced to gib­ber­ing imbe­ciles when I bestow my pres­ence upon them. Indeed, though it’s hard to believe, in some quar­ters both my chosen pseud­onym and my real name mean noth­ing. Abso­lutely noth­ing. I cope with this trau­matic real­isa­tion by ignor­ing such fools, ima­gin­ing them per­ish­ing in par­tic­u­larly cruel and unusual ways, then turn­ing back to the warm and reas­sur­ing glow of one of my many web­sites. Where I mean some­thing. Where I mean everything. Where my fame bleeds out of every elec­tronic pore. And where my devoted fol­low­ers know my true worth.

Everything has gone slightly crazy, hasn’t it? I think the planet is shift­ing on its axis or some­thing. A seis­mic event has occurred. Or not. Real­ity has become intan­gible, a mere concept. We’re all dying like drowned flies in so much sickly honey.

That’s it. No more. Enough mean­ing­less adu­la­tion. Let’s talk hard cap­it­al­ist profit. This web­site is offi­cially for sale. An Unre­li­able Wit­ness is up for auc­tion. Let’s start the bid­ding at £5,000, shall we?

I feel ill. Help me under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing. I feel unwell. Help me, some­body. I feel naus­eous. Help me, please. I feel lost. Help.

Hello? Hello? Is any­one there? What, don’t tell me my fif­teen minutes are up already?