There’s a phrase often thrown around in journalism: “Don’t become the news.” In its simplest form, this aphorism is meant to underscore the need for objectivity in one’s reporting: Don’t insert yourself into the story; maintain the neutrality you owe your readers. Read another way, however, it becomes general advice to a world obsessed with celebrity and even notoriety.
The pursuit of being newsworthy, it suggests, rarely leads to happiness. Whether you’re a trad wife whose brand went viral or the would-be assassin of a presidential candidate, if you find yourself compelled to action by the imagined reactions of the wider public, then you’ve probably set off down the wrong path. “Becoming the news” is a dirty business—that much everyone can agree on.
Even the people who turn themselves into brands would rather tell you they’re “living their authentic lives” in public, not tailoring them to the algorithm. On Instagram and TikTok, we suspend disbelief as we watch moneyed Utah wives make crayons from scratch for their perfectly manicured children. At political conventions, no one breaks kayfabe as they talk about their salt-of-the-earth, soccer-coach, suburban life, somehow entirely compatible with a trip to DC every other week and an expense account that runs into the hundreds of thousands.
Billionaires and Hollywood actors and venture capitalists are “just so lucky,” #blessed. They’re supposed to profess that they’re embarrassed about the at.