Being a world-famous author. Selling a million books. The first time I realized these two things needn’t go hand in hand, I was listening to Tim Ferriss talk to Noah Kagan on his podcast. “The half-life of fame,” Tim said, “is going to drop precipitously as algorithm-chasing becomes more and more dominant and more and more determinant of what is surfaced.”
There used to be only a handful of cable TV networks. If they all played Oprah Winfrey’s talk show, of course everyone would know Oprah. And they did. But now, Tim said, everyone gets their own, personally curated feed. There are millions of creators and micro-influencers, and micro-bubbles of attention they inhabit. Instead of having your pick of 10 fashion bloggers, you can probably find 10 in your town alone, another 10 dominant in your country, and then another 10,000 across the globe who are also creating interesting work.
Even in your personal sphere, you can notice it, Tim explains. 15 years ago, the viral video of the week would indeed last all week. Everyone you talked to on the regular had seen it. Nowadays, most people will not recognize most of the memes you send them, and even the ones who are infinitely more popular than anything from 15 years ago used to be fizzle out after a few hours of fame.
A million people is just 0.01% of the world’s population. If I keep writing good books and selling them for a reasonable price, can I get one of my books into the hands of that many people? I don’t see why not. I start with the ones I know, and then I go from there. Fame? That’s not required, is it?
In the end, Tim finds the right questions to ask: “If what you do is less and less persistent, meaning it has less and less durability, what game are you signing up for, and what does winning that game look like?”
Fame is dying, and that’s okay. Maybe, instead of more superstars, all we need is folks doing good work in every corner of the globe.