All eyes on me

Last year I decided I wanted to be famous.

Our culture keeps spitting out successful, attractive celebrities of younger and younger ages, so why not me?

Jennifer Lawrence is a goddess among us at a mere twenty-three years old . As of June 2013, Justin Bieber was worth about $58 million. He’s 19 years old.

On top of all these “idols” around us, we have our own Me Generation problems to deal with. We like ourselves — sometimes too much.

To demonstrate our flawed perception, I offer a case study.

So around Oct. 2011 I discovered that “famous gay” is actually a viable career path via YouTube. I thought I had found my niche market.

Luckily, I never pursued that market.

I decided I wouldn’t join the ranks of the Internet-infamous Tyler Oakley and Davey Wavey. And looking back on that choice, I’m so glad I didn’t head over to the dark side.

Internet fame is creating an awkward, sexually frustrated genre of homosexual.
It’s reductive and relies on stereotypes. Davey Wavey does nearly all of his videos shirtless. What does he talk about in them? Well, nothing of actual importance, but what does it matter? Just look at that chest.

Tyler Oakley focuses on more worthless tales but with a little more focus on being cute and sassy. To fill his sexual void, he normally finds an attractive British man to hang out with.

In a 2009 interview, Spike Lee ended up calling Tyler Perry’s work “coonery buffoonery.”

Lee rightfully got angry over the fact that Perry successfully capitalizes on this oppressive and reductive view of black culture, citing Perry’s owning a private jet.

In the same vein, I ask, why must we play the fag in order to get famous? Why reduce yourself to bulging pectorals covered by only a tiny tank top?

We’re all more than that. None of us are these one-dimensional characters that earn us Internet fame and glory. Yet here we are, transforming into another entity by being pornographically exploitive of bodies, intimate emotions and daily life.

Somewhere along the line we figured out that homosexuality is hip and fashionable — so it was exploited to no end.

Queer media representation is obviously a cause I’ll canvas for, but I’ll only stand for the right type of representation.

Gay comedians such as Gabe Liedman and Billy Eichner may be focusing on gay sex and diva obsessions at times, but it’s because they have a point. And all comedians talk about sex.

They’re not spreading their cheeks on a YouTube channel while pretending to be doing some accent challenge proposed by a follower.

You simply don’t need to tell everyone the mundane details of your life. We live through that in our own experience.

Our obsession with being famous is turning dangerous for many. Based on the above, in the gay realm, there is an imminent problem with the need to twist a tit for an Instagram like.

And it doesn’t stop there. No one ever said that YouTube queen Jenna Marbles got her fame for her wit over her sex appeal.

Be famous if you want, but do it for something important, something meaningful. This instant-gratification fame that we’re creating is destroying candidness and creating caricatures.

Why even be famous anyway? We saw what it did to Amanda Bynes.

­— sjostrow@indiana.edu
You can follow Columnist Sam Ostrowski on Twitter @ostrowski_s_j