How did being “famous” become a thing? How did society peg people who are singers, actors, writers, etc. as a “celebrity”?
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Mass media. It became possible to record entertainers, copy those recordings, and broadcast them across the world. This was already kind of possible with writing, but performances like singing and acting are much more intimate. Suddenly, just by dint of consuming popular music or theater/film, everyone in the country was seeing this person’s face or hearing their voice. Our brains aren’t really built for regularly seeing someone we can’t actually interact or be friends with, so a whole side industry grew up of sharing the details of these people’s lives to partially scratch that itch. Thus, celebrities.
It’s 1237.
You’re a farmer in a mid-sized village in central Bavaria.
There’s about 400 people living in town.
You don’t know all of them by name, but you could probably name about a third of them.
All 400 of them know the priest though, Father Jonas.
Father Jonas is locally famous because his work with the church gives him a relatively wide reach to everyone in town. You are not famous because you just grow melons.
Fame is an outgrowth of jobs that have a wide reach – politicians, entertainers, religious leadership – people that interact with huge numbers of individuals.
Celebrities have existed as long as large societies have existed. There were celebrity gladiators & chariot drivers in Rome, famous actors & artists in Ancient Greece. It’s just something humans in large groups do.
The word famous already explains it. Someone is known by many people. Few thousand years ago, Jesus would have been famous. So would have Caesar
Now that societies needs have changed, famous people tend to be musicians, actors and athletes
Being famous wasn’t always desirable; back in the Italian Renaissance, people who knew they could never be famous in their own right used to assassinate noblemen JUST so their name would forever be linked to this slain personage, and thus, they would achieve a certain level of immortality.
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