That’s what fame is like.
You think this sounds like beauty because we sometimes say that beauty is all in the eye of the one beholding the beauty. And, indeed, we don’t get to decide if we are beautiful. Different people will have different opinions, and the only person who gets to decide if I’m attractive is the person looking at me. But then there is some consensus about what attractive is. Beauty is an attribute defined by human nature and culture. I can see my eyes and my lips and my boobs when I look in a mirror. I know what I look like.
Fame is not this way.
A person’s fame is in everyone’s head except their own. You could be checking into your flight at the airport and 999 people will see you as just another face in the crowd. The thousandth might think you’re more famous than Jesus.
As you can imagine, this makes fame pretty disorienting. You never know who knows what. You never know if someone is looking at you because they think you’re attractive or because you went to college with them or because they’ve been watching your videos or listening to your music or reading about you in magazines for years. You never know if they know you and love you. Worse, you never know if they know you and hate you.
And while I can look in the mirror and know that I’m good-looking, you can never really know that you are famous because fame is not applied equally by all. You fall somewhere different on a broad spectrum with every person you encounter.
Though, weirdly, there comes a point at which you are famous enough that it will no longer matter whether someone has ever heard of you for them to think you’re famous. Just learning that you are famous is enough for them to care, to be interested, to want a photo, an autograph, a piece of who you are.
I remember when I was in middle school, I was at the airport and I saw people taking pictures with a guy who definitely looked famous. He had big sunglasses and a ton of sparkly rings and two watches. I went and got a photo with him as well. I later learned that he was a music producer and had rapped on a couple of Lil Wayne tracks. I didn’t even really know who Lil Wayne was.
I’ve had the opportunity to do more thinking about fame than most people, but fame isn’t some monolithic thing; it isn’t the same for the local weatherman as it is for Angelina Jolie. So let’s talk a little about April May’s theory of tiered fame.
Tier 1: Popularity
You are a big deal in your high school or neighborhood. You have a peculiar vehicle that people around town recognize, you are a pastor at a medium-to-large church, you were once the star of the high school football team.
Tier 2: Notoriety
You are recognized and/or well-known within certain circles. Maybe you’re a preeminent lepidopterist whom all the other lepidopterists idolize. Or you could be the mayor or meteorologist in a medium-sized city. You might be one of the 1.1 million living people who has a Wikipedia page.
Tier 3: Working-Class Fame
A lot of people know who you are and they are distributed around the world. There’s a good chance that a stranger will approach you to say hi at the grocery store. You are a professional sports player, musician, author, actor, television host, or internet personality. You might still have to hustle to make a living, but your fame is your job. You’ll probably trend on Twitter if you die.
Tier 4: True Fame
You get recognized by fans enough that it is a legitimate burden. People take pictures of you without your permission, and no one would scoff if you called yourself a celebrity. When you start dating someone, you wouldn’t be surprised to read about it in magazines. You are a performer, politician, host, or actor whom the majority of people in your country would recognize. Your humanity is so degraded that people are legitimately surprised when they find out that you’re “just like them” because, sometimes, you buy food. You never have to worry about money again, but you do need a gate with an intercom on your driveway.
Tier 5: Divinity
You are known by every person in your world, and you are such a big deal that they no longer consider you a person. Your story is much larger than can be contained within any human lifetime, and your memory will continue long after your earthly form wastes away. You are a founding father of a nation, a creator of a religion, an emperor, or an idea. You are not currently alive.
If you look closely at this scale, you might notice that there are two different qualities built into every level of fame: First, the number of people who know who you are. Second, the average level of devotion those people have to you. Cult leaders have Tier 5 levels of devotion but Tier 1 audience size. Thinking of fame in this way has really helped me come to grips with what being famous means, understand where I am at on the scale, and decide what to do about it.
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In the weeks after Andy and I uploaded the first New York Carl video, I had squeaked my way into Tier 3 fame. New Yorkers mostly ignored me still, but I’d do selfies if I was close to touristy spots. I had a woman walk up to me and start talking to me like we were friends. After about five minutes I was like, “Do we know each other?” Turns out she just assumed we did because she recognized me and was trying to keep things from getting awkward by telling me about her kids’ new school.
Wrong strategy, by the way.
I was making more money than I knew what to do with, but not enough to, like, buy a nice home in New York or LA. And my placement was precarious. Due to the enormity of the Carl story, I would probably always have some revenue from that first video to live off of, but in the time before we visited Hollywood Carl, I could already feel myself dropping quickly to notoriety. Soon, only die-hard fans or, worse, historians would care, while everyone else would vaguely remember that I was once . . . something?
The Hollywood Carl video changed this, bumping me solidly into Tier 4. And there is a big difference between Tier 3 and Tier 4. If I had to guess, including bands, artists, authors, politicians, hosts, actors, etc., there are probably thirty thousand Tier 3 famous people in America. At any given time, there are probably fewer than five hundred Tier 4 celebrities.
This was when things started moving fast.
I stopped being some weird anomaly, and I became a part of the story in a very different way. From then on, if I wanted to be on a TV show, Jennifer Putnam could make it happen. I was expected to have opinions, and I had plenty. The Magic Castle became an epicenter of Carl conspiracies, but I was a bigger epicenter. The castle had to drop the illusion for a while and let investigators in, but no one ever found the hand (rather, no one told people when they found it). But I was a person; the FBI couldn’t come search me unless there was a crime, and there weren’t a lot of laws about this kind of thing. We kept expecting to hear from someone official, but we didn’t.
Instead, Robin was in my email getting requests from news agencies all over the world to repost the video. They knew not to do it without asking now. He was pulling in $5K, $10K, $25K per license. He was putting together a media tour, but he didn’t want me to do it until there was something we could be promoting, ideally preorders for a book that I would someday have time to write.