I Got Famous On The Internet And It Didn’t Make Me Happy
700,000 Followers Later, here’s my thoughts.
“Excuse me, are you Finding Tom?”
Meeting a stranger who already knows who you are is a horrifying experience.
Since many of you probably haven’t had this happen to you before, let me break down how it feels in colorful detail:
It sucks.
Well, it doesn’t really suck. I mean, getting strangers to come say hi to you and tell you they love your work is a cool thing. However, it’s pretty much always an awkward conversation because you’re both nervous as shit.
I mean, stranger danger is real.
The first few times you get noticed in public is a euphoric experience. I imagine it’s like doing drugs, because I felt high afterwards. After a few months, though, it gets repetitive, awkward, and old.
Why?
Well, lately I feel I never should’ve been famous in the first place.
Also, I don’t want to let people down. I’m boring in real life.
I digress.
My name is Tom Kuegler, and I have over 700,000 followers on social media. I started making videos online 3 years ago, and sadly one of them went viral.
I received 20,000 Facebook likes in 8 hours, and was suddenly catapulted to internet fame. The next day I went live on Facebook and some 300 people showed up — I couldn’t believe my phone was telling me the truth.
Since then, I’ve garnered half a million followers on Facebook, 140,000 subscribers on Youtube, 20,000 Instagram followers, 50,000 Medium followers, and 14,000 LinkedIn followers.
Almost a million people follow me on social media.
When I got famous in the Philippines, I went on famous podcasts, got featured in national media, and got invited to far-flung cities to go judge beauty pageants.
I made $6,000 from a video that took me 3 hours to make. I met other famous vloggers like Drew Binsky and Nas Daily. I organized meetups in Manila that 175 people showed up to.
One guy drove 8 hours to come see me.
I met a princess in the Philippines. I’ve seen the inside of gigantic world-class cave systems that nobody knows about. I’m talking St. Peter’s Basilica times four.
It all sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? When I put all this crap together like that it almost seems like I’m lying.
I’m not, and to be honest with you, I think I always wanted the fame. Fame shouts “you’re a good person.” It shouts “what you do matters!” It shouts “you have beautiful ideas that we agree with!”
And all of that is severely intoxicating. Uploading a picture and KNOWING that you’re going to get 5,000 likes on it feels ridiculous. Fame is corrosive over time, and so addicting that folks will do anything to keep it.
Not to mention it stifles growth and leaves you feeling like a zombie.
I’m about to get into why the fame didn’t do much for me, and why you should be careful of it. Fame is like Medusa — it looks beautiful, but it can steal your goddamn soul.
If you’re a writer, vlogger, or content creator who wants to get famous on the internet one day, you might want to read this.
Here is my cautionary tale.
Fame Makes You Think You’re Better Than Everybody Else
Fame turns good people into arrogant assholes.
And you can sort of see why. When you have thousands of people telling you how awesome you are every single day, it’s impossible for it to not go to your head.
I’ve known so many Medium writers who get famous and become jerks.
And this isn’t just bad for their audience, it’s bad for the creator. Arrogance is subtle. It starts bleeding into every aspect of your life. People will start getting real distant real fast even with small changes in your composure because you aren’t fun to be around anymore.
This arrogance literally alienates you from people, which is my next point.
Fame Alienates You From People
“They said tell us how to make it ’cause we’re getting real impatient So I looked ’em in the eye and said You don’t wanna be high like me Never really knowing why like me You don’t ever wanna step off that roller coaster and be all alone” -Mike Posner, I Took A Pill In Ibiza
Fame alienates you from people for two big reasons:
- People can’t relate to you anymore.
- You get so busy you don’t hang out with friends anymore.
That first one is the most important. I have a lot of good friends, but I don’t think any of them REALLY know what I do for a living.
Fame typically comes after success. Success catapults you to the top of whatever game you’re playing. And it’s lonely at the top.
Isn’t it ironic? The more people love you, the lonelier you get.
Fame Makes You A Slave Creatively
I know vloggers in the Philippines who got famous for gassing up the Philippines. They have armies of Filipino fans who watch them simply because they’re complimenting their home country.
Now they’re chained to the Philippines like slaves.
If they decide to create content about literally any other topic, their views get cut by 1,000 percentage points. Less views mean less money, so best to keep on the views train and gas up the Philippines some more.
I expect in a few years they’ll burn out, sell their condo, and move out of the country for good.
There’s only so much restriction you can take as a creator before you scream, kick something, and throw everything out the window to move somewhere else.
I don’t know about you, but I got into the business of creativity to bust down the walls of restriction.
It’s another ironic truth that if you’re very good at creating something, people come to expect it from you. And if you don’t give them what they want, they simply won’t follow you anymore.
So there’s a choice creators need to make.
Do I want more money? Or do I want more creative freedom?
I have yet to come across an instance where both can live harmoniously for extended periods of time. Here’s a graph to show my point.
At first when you start out, you have UNLIMITED creative freedom. It’s beautiful, man. The problem is, you aren’t making any money because you haven’t found that cash cow topic to create content about.
Once you find it, though, money starts increasing for you.
The next problem is, creative freedom decreases because you’ll have to continue to make content about that ONE SPECIFIC TOPIC to make more money.
It’s a cage. Success and fame is a cage.
At first it doesn’t feel like your creative freedom is getting stifled, because you’re still new to creating content about that one topic, but over time it gets unbearable.
And that’s why this game can suck the soul out of your body if you let it.
It takes a strong person to sit back and say “You know what? My happiness is more important than the money.”
Unfortunately, the fame and money are intoxicating.
Money pays the bills and fame validates your ideas, but ultimately they’re hollow things to pursue because over time your creativity gets stifled, you become an asshole, and you’ll get alienated from your friends.
Then you’ll end up on a beach in Bali with a bunch of other arrogant assholes thinking to yourself “What did I become?”
Maintain your creative integrity. Cut shit out of your life that makes you unhappy, even if it’s making you tons of money. And make time for your friends and family.
If you do those things, you’ll navigate out of the hurricane that is fame and fortune and come out the other side to birds chirping and sun shining.
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