8 reasons why you're not famous.

You’re trying too hard. Sure, when you’re chasing your dreams, it’s all about persistence, perseverance and perspiration, but there’s a smooth, charming way to do it - like the way Bill Murray coerces Sigourney Weaver into liking him in Ghostbusters - and there’s the tonedeaf, overeager, sweaty way to do it - like the way Chris Farley bricks selling breakpads in the first half of Tommy Boy. You’re doing it the second way and dang, it ain’t pretty. To quote a line from SuperTroopers, “Desperation is a stinky cologne.”

You’re not trying hard enough. Like so many wannabe celebrities, you expect fame to be thrust upon you, for your time in the sun to be served up on a silver platter. Perhaps you liken yourself to Bukowski, thinking, that maybe, you too will toil for 50 years in obscurity, living like a drunken baddass, writing poetry and true life short stories when you’re blackout drunk, simply for the sake of needing something to do. Then, out of nowhere, you’ll be recognized for your undiscovered genius and will sleep with hippie-girls half your age till the end of your days. Well, I’m actually happy to be the one to break it to you. You’re no Bukowski, bub.

You’ve let yourself go. Let’s be honest, you’ve really gone to shit. Most of your friends agree. Maybe not you’re new, shittier friends but your old friends, the ones that knew you in your prime. You just don’t have it any more.

Someone else got there first. You know that one thing that you do really well that was kind of unique and maybe you somehow you leverage that into a little piece of the fame pie? Well, someone else got there first. Every time I listen to Mayer Hawthorne’s gimmicky, bowtied-hipster take on Sam Cooke-soul, I imagine there’s some other, wannabe soul singer out, who was trying to do the same thing. Based out of some other city, Raleigh-Durham or Austin, with the exact same gimmick, retro clothes, a cheesy name like Art Killingsworth or Duffield DeSouza, and a white, vintage soul sound, who is just plain fucked now, because he wasn’t bros with Peanut Butter Wolf. Sucks for that guy.

You’re been barking up the wrong tree all along. You weren’t supposed to be a world renowned graffiti writer, bro! You were supposed to be a standup comedian! But now, you’re on probation for felony-vandalism, you’ve got a heroin habit you picked up in the joint that’s costing you 3 grand a month and there is, like, no time to get to an open mic.

You’ve got a shitty publicist. You really need to fire that cooze. What a waste of fucking money.

You’ve been banking it all on reality. It wasn’t a bad bet. Plenty of less attractive, less intelligent people than you have made a name for themselves on one moronic reality-competition TV show and then leveraged it into hometown notoriety, ultimately landing a co-hosting gig on a drive-time radio block in a non-major market. But hey, if you really want to be famous, don’t you think you should aim a little higher?

You think you’re going to get famous off your blog. Hahahahaha!?!?!?!??!?!!?!?! Wait, for real? For really real? That’s how you’re trying to get famous? You might as well stick to reality! There’s room for (kinda) famous bloggers like there’s room for famous movie critics. The whole internet has, maybe, 4-6 spots and they’re mostly in blog verticals you don’t know shit about (Tech Blogs or Mommy Blogs). So unless you’re dad is Mike Arrington or you’re fucking the Pioneer Woman’s husband, that’s a fantastic reason why you’re not famous.

Photo Credit: Wen Zhang. Used and Modified under Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License