Back in 7th grade, I was sitting in my Social Studies class, because standing the whole time was exhausting. This really old lady at the front of the class assigned us to decide what we wanted to do for the rest of our lives. Most of the people in the class looked at the assignment, picked something, and then moved on with their pathetic lives of gossiping. I took the assignment seriously though, because I thought if I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life by the end of 7th grade, I would never succeed in life (ironically I still haven’t succeeded). I looked through the list of careers in the folder, and since it was in alphabetical order, I looked at accounting, and it was an immediate no. Advertising was next. and I was like, I like commercials on TV…I wasn’t talented in art or writing, but making commercials on the Super Bowl seemed fun. So advertising would be what I did for the rest of my life.

Since I was susceptible to junior high teacher propaganda, I made it my duty to learn everything about advertising from that moment forward. I tried to relate every class after that to advertising somehow. How did kinetic energy from science, quadratic equations I learned in math, and Shakespeare from English relate to advertising? I don’t know, but I tried to figure it out.

I started checking out books about advertising in the library, and learning all the big advertising agencies, like Wieden+Kennedy, Leo Burnett Co., Young & Rubicam and McCann-Erickson. I studied all of biggest and most creative advertisers like NIKE, McDonald’s and Apple. I imagined working as copywriter in dreamt of one of those big ad agencies and staying up all night coming up with the best slogans, logos and campaigns long before Mad Men was a thing.

I eventually graduated from college in a degree as close as I could to advertising, Business Management with a Marketing emphasis. I spent most of my summer in between junior and senior year in college looking for an internship. After college, I applied to hundreds of ad agencies to no avail.

Since I needed a cot and four walls to survive, I started looking for the next best thing. I got a job in marketing…telemarketing. In other words, absolutely nothing like a job in advertising. The thing about telemarketing, and customer service jobs is that I hate talking to people, I hate talking on the phone, I hate selling things to people, and I’m an introvert. After fifteen years, I finally figured that out. Don’t ever accuse me of being a fast learner.

Eventually, I found a way to derail myself out of that horrible career path by moving away, going back to school, studying social media advertising, and getting a job in paid advertising. Fifteen years later, the advertising industry isn’t anything like what I imagined in seventh grade.

TV and Super Bowl ads still exist, so maybe Leo Burnett, Young & Rubicam and Wieden+Kennedy still serve a purpose. But TV ads are expensive, broad, and really hard to measure when it comes to effectiveness. Most companies can’t afford TV, but in the last 25 years, while I was toiling away in not advertising, social media is now the main source of advertising.

Advertising isn’t the only thing that changed because of the internet. Access to becoming famous is now there for anyone. If you want to be famous, take your pick of YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Kick, Spotify, X, podcasts, and even WordPress, and LinkedIn. You can either get famous or infamous by posting a lot of interesting content, gaining a little attention, and your fame is off to the races. Or you can get famous almost as easily by accident.

The problem with fame now is that the bar for fame is so low, so you can get forgotten just as easily as you got famous. The market decides, so if your schtick isn’t long-term interesting, you can be a ghost in the graveyard of fame. (Sounding like a boomer…) Back in my day, gatekeepers in charge of fame, and they usually made sure you had talent to sustain their long-term investment. You had to be good at acting, dancing, singing, athletics, modeling, writing a book, or being a comedian. Michael Jackson had to sing his way up from a really young age in a family group, then solo, before he could get famous. Michaël Jordan had to go to 3 years of and play basketball and get a shoe deal with NIKE, before he got world famous. Michael Scott had to work as a lowly salesman for 8 years, and become Salesman of the Year, get salesman of the year twice, before he could gain his fame and elevated status of Regional Manager of Scranton Dunder Mifflin.

Nowadays, you can get 15 minutes for introducing the cultural term of “hawk tuah”. Going back 10 years, a Chewbacca Mask Lady, could be 15 minutes famous for wearing a Chewbacca mask and laughing. I even gained minor WordPress fame back in 2013, by getting Freshly Pressed, which brought dozens of readers to yard.

YouTubers, Instagrammers, Twitcher’s, Tik Toker’s, even Bitter Blogger’s get famous for doing watered down versions of what made people famous in my day. Making mediocre skits (actors), lip syncing on TikTok (singers), short dances on TikTok (professional back up dancers), writing a funny blog post (authors), posting an attractive picture on Instagram (model), doing insanely difficult basketball shots, ala Dude Perfect (athletes), playing video games in front of people, ala Twitch (Reality TV). In other words, all you have to be is mediocrely talented. Attention is the coin of the realm on Social Media. If you have that, you can get as famous as Michael Jordan.

Unfortunately, attention is fleeting and expensive, so in order to stay famous, you have to feed the content machine and that machine is just like a shredding machine that will take endless content and continue to shred it until there is nothing left.

The entry into fame has never been lower. Back when I was in junior high, I had to actually jump to get over the bar in the high jump. Now you can walk over it. But in order to maintain fame, you have to keep jumping until the bar is higher than Jupiter.

A few people have the stomach for unrelentless content machine, but if you are like me and want to avoid fame, make sure to avoid cameras while you are doing your stupidest or most talented things.

While you are doing your best to avoid fame, (or attract it), here are some Bitter Friday Giftures to satiate your appetite for Giftures…

While I was sitting in my seventh grade…

Because standing the whole class…

This old lady at the front of class…

Most of the kids in the class did the assignment…

But I took the assignment seriously…

I did my best to research how I would someday…

But it didn’t work out…

I went for a job that would pay me money…

When I came back to advertising fifteen years later…

Turns out that getting famous…

Back in my day…

But now…

All you have to do is have a camera…

Or do something entirely stupid…

ARRRRGGGGHHHH

Bitter Low Bar Ben