The Price of Internet Fame

(Wiki)

THREE OF BEOWULF'S virtues make sense. The fourth seems more like a vice. He was the man most gracious and fair-minded / Kindest to his people and keenest to win fame. Gracious, fair, kind. But also: more eager than anyone to see his name in torchlights. “Keenest to win fame” is one translation of lofgeornost—lof is “glory,” geornost is “gladdest for.” Some also translate lofgeornost as “praise-yearnest.”

We English speakers are praise-yearners from the outset. The signature warrior hero of English literature, Beowulf, was, if not “famous for being famous” (in the 1960s phrase), something weirder still: famous for wanting to be famous. Beowulf's strengths are not chiefly bravery or even victories in battle; he is renowned precisely for his thirst for fame.

A bit of a blow. Fame in our time is often styled as an unwholesome aspiration, shorthanded “Kardashian” and identified with assorted Instagram sphinxes. Consider one: Kylie Jenner, whose swollen lips came to national attention in 2015 when a debate raged about whether they were shot through with hyaluronic acid or, as Jenner maintained, merely overlined. Jenner's eventual I-chopped-down-the-cherry-tree confession that, yes, she'd had her lips enhanced with acid injections apparently defined her as a singularly candid ingenue. She went on to pursue lip care as a profession and in some inexplicable way then became a billionaire with a name better known than Beowulf's. The yongenest self-madeiost femaliest lofgeornost billionaire.