The Low Price of Fame

Collectively, our generation is easily addicted to notable people. Anyone with even a small amount of reputation is clung to by the masses like some sort of savior. People absolutely can’t get enough of celebrities and pop culture icons. But fifteen years ago, in order to achieve this level fame, you actually had to be really good at something. However, the advent of online streaming video, particularly YouTube, has made it much easier to achieve global reputation and be known by millions. Notably hilarious videos quickly become “viral”, meaning that they achieve popularity at an incredible rate due to the abundant networking opportunities created by the internet. Basically, is now possible to become quickly famous simply by being really dumb. Which I think is great. The following are three people who have been launched into a lifestyle of fame and recognition (either good or bad) simply by being stupid in front of a camera.

1. Star Wars Kid

On November 4, 2002, a Canadian teenager named Ghyslain Raza decided to use his school’s video camera to film himself using a golf ball retriever as a star wars light saber to fight off imaginary enemies while making his own dramatic sound effects. He then made the life-altering mistake of leaving this footage on the camera, which some fellow students quickly found and immediately uploaded to the internet. To his dismay, this 2-minute long video quickly exploded all over the internet, and has since become the most viral video of all-time, amassing over a billion views on numerous platforms while inspiring hundreds upon hundreds of parodies.

2. Miss Teen South Carolina

The setting: Miss Teen USA Pageant, 2007:

Host: “Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can’t locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?”

Miss Teen South Carolina “I personally believe, that U.S. Americans, are unable to do so, because uh, some ,people out there, in our nation don’t have maps, and uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should uh, our education over here, in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children.”

This monumental lack of on-the-spot intelligence has launched young Miss Lauren Caitlin Upton into a life of fame, allowing her the opportunity to appear on NBC’s The Today Show, attend the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards (where she parodied her own response), numerous television advertisements, and The Amazing Race 16, on which she is currently a contestant. The video has been viewed over 130 million times on various mediums.

3. Boom Goes the Dynamite

This colossal crash-and-burn of a college sportscast quickly became an internet sensation in 2005 after Brian Collins, a former sportscaster for KXXV television in Waco, Texas, agreed to fill in for the regular sportscaster (who was sick) on the Ball State University Campus Newscast. What ensued is widely considered one of the biggest bloopers in sports history. A malfunctioning teleprompter led to a massively awkward and uncomfortable sportscast, the proportions of which are likely to never be seen again. The disaster, however, was redeemed by Collins’ oddly-inserted catchphrase “Boom Goes the Dynamite” which, due to the viral nature of the video, became quickly famous and has been used extensively in sports culture since the incident. This on-air catastrophe netted Collins a great deal of notoriety and even landed him an appearance on The Late Show.