I'm Nobody Who Are You?

I fought the good fight for a long while but alas I am not altogether impervious to the ubiquitous multi-media gossip mill and reality competition shows. There is something about the pervasiveness of gossip (particularly on the Internet) that insists that you acknowledge and participate in(no matter how peripherally). Come on every Internet provider’s home page has a little corner for it. True it is your choice to click but I dare you to tell me that you don’t read the blurbs…

Honestly I felt like a failure when I succumbed to it, I was certain that I was too levelheaded and stanch in my beliefs, unbending in my convictions to be had. Hell I was down right Republican on the issue (surreptitiously engaged in the deviant behavior I publicly maligned others who took part). Later I found solace and support in the fact that it could – and has happened to the best of us. I mean if someone as smart and sensible as our beloved Anderson Cooper can be ensnared by it’s allure, (as he has admitted to watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta) no one is safe, and I mean no one.

I find it perversely spectacular that a whole new enterprise has been created surrounding the posting of banal pictures of people (famous people) doing everyday tasks (Getting coffee, shopping at Costco’s picking up dry cleaning etc.) They cal it “Sighting” as if Big Foot came out of the woods and went to Pinkberry or the Lochness Monster stopped for gas.

Our voyeuristic fascination has sunken to such a low that we will follow the lives of almost anyone with a pulse and some sunglasses: the offspring of accomplished people, Hollywood royalty, or wealthy families. We’ll even watch people who have slept with one of the afore mentioned. We’ll watch people whose only talent for showing up at parties, getting pissy, stumbling drunk, misplacing a sex tape, and being a grammatically impaired, socially retarded, or even worse people who do …nothing…wait that’s not wholly true, they act out desperate for attention, are stupid, disrespectful and debasing. Over night an absolute nobody can become a somebody by drinking too much, bitch slapping someone then vomiting into her purse, hell with those antics they could have their own TV show and book deal on manners. As asinine as it might be, it is lucrative, for rampant indiscretion, and lack of compunction whore-mongers are often rewarded with golden tickets to fame, fortune and free swag! I have to admit it can make for some good television if only for affirming that you yourself is are not so screwed up.

On one particular day my personal fascination with these non-entities sparked a series of revelatory events that sparked another series of pondering I would like to share now. It started rather innocently:

I was sitting at my desk at home scrolling down a gossip site that for privacy sake we shall call, insignificantpeoplewecareaboutforsomeoddreason.com, Bravo was on the flat screen behind me begging me to “Watch what happens!” only at that particular moment I could only listen to Real New York Housewife Bethany rip Countess Luann a new one with the pristine etiquette only a Countess from Connecticut could appreciate.
Suddenly I asked, myself “Why do I care, why do we care?” About these not so “real” housewives or these post- tweeners who have stretched Worhal’s (or should we call him Whore-hal) adage of 15 minutes of fame like a Madoff investment return.

Flash-forward:

I’m teaching class and struggling to get my students to connect with the information. In desperate frustration I resort to drawing an analogy I cull from my gossip site that illustrates my point in a manner they can relate to. Miraculously the room instantly is brighter for all the light bulbs that go on, they are in a united Oprah “Ah-ha” moment. I’m now in their network, “Can you hear me know?” Prior to my reference the lights where off and everyone was pretending not to be home, when I gave the information straight with no chaser they couldn’t connect, add some empty calories and they were all over it.

I spiral and realize that at some point to stay relevant to my students, and perchance the world I might be obligated to know who these nugatory folks are and what they do/don’t do.

Flash-forward:

I am on the train on my why home and have the “pleasure” of being in a car with some teens who happen to be discussing things that in the past might have been considered or “Private” even “Personal” and discussed in hushed tones. Because of the nature of the dialogue I feel as thought I am eavesdropping however neither I nor anyone else on the car has to strain to hear what is being said, in fact I think all of us are struggling to block it out (there are just things you just don’t want to know that teens are doing, thinking, or experiencing). The youths are speaking in a tone and manner that can best be described as presentational. They are purposefully engaged in creating a spectacle. It is a full on show, a play. We learn who slept with whom, got what from whom, and how so-and-so found out, all peppered with “fucking, bitches and mother-fuckers” They are performing for their unsuspecting, (unwilling) audience who had no idea that their subway ride came with a floorshow.

* As a side bar, you know we New Yorkers complain about the price of the subway however if you take into consideration that for a mere $2.00 you can get from Queens to Brooklyn and hear musical concerts and see plays, all with the gritty reality that makes New York, New York you ungrateful straphangers would think again before bellyaching!

It seems as though they imagine themselves to be as interesting as those vapid, barely able to put a sentence together bobbleheads on The Hills. They for the short stint between 34th street and west 4th on the D train have a captive audience, and in those moments they are famous. That’s when it hit me; rich is passé, it’s no longer good enough – all the money in the is worthless if nobody knows who you are.

Which leads me to the final part of my spiral.

As I traverse this world and am hit with the barrage of marketing ploys that have insidiously (albeit effectively) become our way of life, the quest for beauty, youth, fortune and most recently fame, the hermit crab in me rises and my mind goes to little Emily Dickenson who asked:

I’m nobody who are you?

Such a simple question, but so apropos, and she looks so fine in her crisp white dress completely unfazed like Real Housewife Bethany when she was confronted by Kelly, where when asked you freely admitted that she was in fact – nobody. Dickenson goes on?

Are you nobody too?
Well that’s a pair of us don’t tell,
They’d banish us you know

I realized that the rush, and clamor to be “somebody” to be recognized creates in me an adverse reaction causing me to want to disappear. I figure it’s the by-product of my innate inner rebel; the only way to stand out these days is to withdraw, but who would notice, it’s like that damned tree in the forest! If you make a statement by not bein gthere does anybody get it? Dickenson continues:

Well that’s a pair f us,
Don’t tell, they’d banish us you know.

Though she wrote in the 1800’s somehow her words seem even more poignant today. Because everyone is trying to be known, the idea of someone desirous of being anonymous is unfathomable, so far fetched so fresh- untapped that no one in their right mind would be able to sleep until it was exploited! Eureka! The next reality series would be born. Dickenson ends:

How silly to be somebody
How public like a frog
To tell your name the live long day
To an admiring bog!

And is that just what we have become, a bog with hundreds of narcissistic terribilis croaking out their names, their bad albums, their fashion and handbag lines, their publicity stunt relationships, and breakups, weddings, and even their deaths. There is never any silence or peace in a bog not with all the incessant croaking, and chirping and such. I’m sure there is one pissed off toad that is hunkered down thinking “I wish you all would shut the fuck up!” and asking what did he do to deserve living in this good forsaken place. Not quite unlike how I feel every third day of the week!