Inspired by the thread about Facebook friending famous folks, I have come up with an odd question.
What is famous?
If you know Mick Jagger, that would certainly count as famous. William Shatner, Bruce Willis, the cast of Mythbusters… all I would consider to be clearly and unquestionably famous.
But what about niche artists? It’s my understanding that Bob Marley’s son, “Little Gong” is very well known, in the raggae/rastafarian communties, but not so much in the mainstream world. His fathers fame has to date eluded him, though he may not be seeking it at all.
Authors? Stephen King is clearly famous. Dean Koontz, David Eddings, Anne Rice… all famous. What if someone has 1 hit, and then nothing? Are they still famous? What about a book that is not a Bestseller, but does well? Is J.L. Bourne famous? Niche author, respectable numbers, but nothing compared to the writers listed above. Would he count as “famous”?
I have a friend, known in the Indy Gaming world. He’s worked on some pretty big name projects, helps run a few websites and does sporadic podcasts that are apparently kind of a big deal. (Ironically, I really don’t game, but he is a good friend even without that.) Would he be famous? I’m certain there are Dopers who probably know who he is, but outside of that environment, he is essentially an unknown.
I think people throw around the term too liberally. Many people are well-known and accomplished in their own field but I think you need to have mass recognition among people that know little about that field before they are considered famous. This tends to concentrate the famous in the areas of entertainment but not always. Albert Einstein, Steven Hawking, and Carl Sagan or famous theoretical physicists and Sully Sullenberger is a famous airline pilot turned hero. There are truly famous people in most fields but I tend to set the bar pretty high. I have never heard of about 3/4 of the people people list as famous in those types of threads and don’t even know all of them in your OP.
A friend and I who talk about a lot of silly stuff spent a large chunk of an afternoon on this topic. We tried to work out a range of fame similar to the mohs scale of mineral hardness.
Mick Jagger would be towards the diamond end, while Charlie Watts is more in the quartz area. Folk singer John Gorka, who is in the top tier of his genre I’d put near gypsum in terms of overall worldwide fame.
One of the questions we used was whether a teenager in a country other than the person whose fame we were rating was from would know who that person was. Do high school students in Greece know who Kathleen Sebelius is? I’d guess that more of them know who Freddy Mercury is so he’d be higher on the scale than she is.
I think a lot of it depends on who you’ve heard of. I’d never recognize any of the cast of Mythbusters anywhere so to me they’re not really famous. And in another thread a poster mentioned having no idea who Andy Cohen was (a producer and host for Bravo TV), but to me he’s huge.
An old college professor of mine had his own criteria, which I thought made a lot of sense. I hope I don’t screw this up, but I’m probably going to. Basically, he would say that:
-If you are widely known for something you do, then you are renowned. A successful athlete whom you don’t know much about, beyond his or her success, is renowned. Tyson Gay might be a good example.
-If your reputation transcends the thing you do and people know you for who you are, you are famous. Madonna (who is a singer but also a Kaballah devotee, a mother, the ex-fiancé of Sean Penn, etc etc) is famous.
That actually makes a lot of sense, Cisco. I also think of fame in terms of branding–what someone does may not be all that great, but you know it by name and it’s everywhere that you buy their product.
Jay Leno once said, “You’re not famous until my mother has heard of you.” I can relate to that. My mother was often unaware of who someone like Mick Jagger or Tina Turner were. Of course she knew who Michael Jackson was, but there was a time when you couldn’t escape hearing his name mentioned. It all depends on your interests, and she had no interest in contemporary popular music.
I’d say that you have to be well known outside your area of specialty. A physicist who is known to most physicists doesn’t count; a physicist who is know to non-scientists does. So Hawking is famous because the average man in the street knows who he is.
The of course, you get the geographical level of fame. A king could be famous in his own country, but unknown outside it. So there’s local and global fame.