The Fame Monster Whispered While I Watched The Documentary
On performative culture, complicity, and the exhausting negotiation with wanting to be seen
If you've ever caught yourself doing the exact thing you're judging someone else for, this one's for you.
“I feel shame.”
I whispered this to my husband while watching An Update on Our Family, HBO’s three part docuseries about YouTubers
Myka and James Stauffer and the controversy surrounding their adoption and subsequent rehoming of a child.
What struck me wasn’t just the salacious story, though I’m here for that too. It was watching how ridiculous we all look performing for an invisible audience, making these subtle micro-adjustments that train us to appear natural yet beautiful, unique yet relatable, all while a camera is stuck in our faces.
The Stauffers just happened to do it so well they became millionaires. And adopted a child who, at least partially, served their marketing narrative. I’m sure if you interviewed them they’d have a fully rationalized explanation that aligns neatly with their values while quietly drowning out the voice whispering this isn’t right.
Throughout the documentary we see countless reaction videos of people responding to the Stauffers’ actions. These self-recorded takedowns are equally cringeworthy. Thousands of people offering opinions on a situation they know nothing about, chasing views just like the couple they’re criticizing.
We’re all complicit in this ecosystem. Including me.
The Fame Monster
Lately I’ve been obsessed with the concept of fame, probably because it hums in the background of my life as an artist, actor, singer, creator. Half my job is making things. The other half is promoting them. That’s when the fame monster stirs.
My fame monster doesn’t actually want true fame. It craves possibility. Real fame, the kind where strangers dissect your every move and privacy becomes a distant memory, would be suffocating. It would kill me faster than you can say hey look at me.
What I actually want is an audience. People who hear me, see me, understand me, laugh with me, feel with me. An audience that delights in the performance and maybe tells someone else they were moved. That desire feels right in my body. It doesn’t make me sick.
But the fame monster is ambitious.
Why have 100 people in the audience when you could have 500? Or 1500? Or a stadium?
That would kill me, I say.
Wouldn’t it be worth it?
Maybe, I think. I guess I won’t know unless it happens.
And there’s the opening fame needs. The crack where it worms into my brain and hijacks the creative process. What started as strength and curiosity and calm becomes rushed, haphazard, manic, desperate.
Down the rabbit hole I go.
Until something like this documentary startles me back.
None of this is real. Fame is a story about the past or the future, never the reality of the present. The present is this day. What will I do with it? Make a song? Write dialogue? Call a friend? Read a book?
This is real. We are real.
Fame is a story I don’t want to write, I remind myself. Over and over.
And yet even as I write these words the fame monster whispers: who will read this? Could this be the thing that makes you famous?
But I don’t want fame, I insist.
And so I stay awake. Aware of what is real.
Even as the monster dreams on.
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