Still hard but I think the parent is arguing that there are more famous people today than say 50 years ago. One of the things the internet did is create more niche groups. There's way more B list and C list celebrities than ever before. Being an A list is still very hard, but being a celebrity in general is easier. Plus there's all the one hit wonders and many more of them. Even the "runs into burning building" famous people are much more likely to become known across the country or globe than before
Take 50 years ago. There were more newspapers then - every town had its local columnists, who were the bloggers of the day. Big cities had multiple daily newspapers.
TV and radio broadcasting wasn't so centralized. There were a lot more local radio DJs and locally produced TV shows.
But if we look back at history, it's mostly the A list who come to mind.
A better 99% example is from the mid-20th century, when a college student was so locally famous the student body voted to name a building after him. But I can't find that example.
I expect the nature of niches has shifted to be less localized and more subject matter. Until recently, there really wasn't an equivalent of Instagram or Tik-Tok influencers that I have doubtless never heard of but which have many thousands of followers.
To the 99 PI point, I'm always struck walking around a city like London how much significant statuary there is of people I've never heard of in spite of being reasonably familiar with British history. And, yes, some of them probably don't have a Wikipedia article and if you were to create one, some admin would probably decide it was insufficiently notable.
>TV and radio broadcasting wasn't so centralized. There were a lot more local radio DJs and locally produced TV shows.
I'm not sure I agree with this in general though. No, you're less likely to know of local DJs today. But go back a few decades and "everyone" watched the same lineup of TV on a Thursday night and it would probably have been something of a cultural knowledge shortcoming if you didn't know who the network news anchors were. (I could name them from 25 years or so back. Really wouldn't know today.)
But there were other sorts of fame which are less popular today than yesteryear.
Secret lodges were once very popular, with their own hierarchies and (internal) fame.
Newspaper kiosks would carry a wider range of newspapers and magazines, but have now effectively disappeared.
Local clubs were also more common. When my old neighborhood was build in the 1950s, one of the lots we set aside as a clubhouse, with square dancing events. (It's since been turned into a pool.)
> go back a few decades and "everyone" watched the same lineup of TV on a Thursday night and it would probably have been something of a cultural knowledge shortcoming if you didn't know who the network news anchors were.
Sure, but godelski was talking about 50 years ago.
In the 1970s, a local TV station in Miami had "Toby the Robot" in a show to read the Sunday comics - https://www.pbase.com/donboyd/image/132365543 . Toby would also appear in local parades.
Go back a few more years and there was even less network programming. If you saw the musical "Hairspray", that portrays a show based on Baltimore's Buddy Deane Show, which was one of several local teen dance television shows later replaced by national shows.
Remember, it wasn't until 1951 that we had a nation-wide microwave system that could carry TV broadcasts, and at the beginning most TV shows were still created locally. The Prime Time Access Rule went into place about 50 years ago to try to prevent that centralization.
(For another fictional movie portrayal, O Brother, Where Art Thou? shows The Soggy Bottom Boys achieving local fame because of their song on The Flour Hour.)
So even though there are new methods now, my observation is still that there were other ways to get famous, and some of these ways are no longer so common, making them somewhat hidden to modern viewpoints.
How then would you determine the validity of "There's way more B list and C list celebrities than ever before."?
Many of your examples don’t seem to fit fame. People may be known locally, but fame requires someone to be widely known which implies a wide geographic range.
Put another way, at what level is the winner of a beauty contest famous? I don’t think people would universally agree except at the extremes. Miss America is famous, the winner of a spring break wet T-shirt contest isn’t barring something unusual happening.
Is Miss America even famous these days? I sure couldn't name one--though perhaps I'd recognize names from years past.
I tend to agree that if you go back a number of decades more local people were probably fairly well-known locally but I'm not sure I'd put the top guy at the Elks Lodge in the "famous" category. Draw a small enough circle in geography or niche interest and a lot of people are notable to some degree.
To some degree, of course, it's because fame/notability in the Miss America case isn't really separable from relatively reliable third-party sources (though I wouldn't put a lot of money down on whatever life story agents and PR people have concocted). The same tends to be true of actors, pro athletes, and politicians above some minimal level. Even senior company executives and academics may not have much written about them.
Which also means that the number people where >1k people know them also increases. The question is about proportions and locality. I feel pretty confident in saying that the rate of non-local celebrities has dramatically increased faster than population. I would also wager that the number of total celebrities (as defined above) has also increased faster than population and accelerated through the instagram and even more through the tiktok age. We have far more ways to communicate than previously, especially non-local. I can talk to someone in Japan without a HAM radio nor an expensive long distance phone call. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if someone living in Japan reads this comment.
