OBSCURITY:           


An odd encounter with a one-hit wonder today made me muse about obscurity. While on my usual route to go pick up Chinese, (because the Procreator can't do it herself) I spotted a surprisingly familiar face when I walked inside the store. I was face-to-face with Lil Mama, current America's Best Dance Crew panel judge, and the face behind the 2007 overnight sensation "Lipgloss." Her song fit in perfectly with the zeitgeist of the late 2000's. We were getting into the era of writing obscure (there goes that word) songs about anything, and she had capitalized on that aspect. We chatted for a bit, and she was flattered that I remembered her, even as a one-hit wonder. Apparently, she fell off the charts when she upstaged Jay-Z during a live performance, and the world has forgotten of her musical existence since. She mentioned that she was hard at work looking for someone to bring her back into the spotlight. Seeing her in those brief moments gave me the instant sensation of "Oh, yeah! I totally remember when you used to be relevant." Then the downward spiral occurred. Fame is fleeting, ladies and gents.
     And it got me thinking, why is it that our culture is so prone to obscurity? We criticize and scorn people with the utmost scrutiny for a single slip-up that seals their entire fate. People, songs, hard-hitting issues - why do they all vanish into the notorious fog of obscurity? After due consideration, I have but one answer to offer: our culture thrives on ephemerality; we get this unwarranted kick from the latest fad, trend, or entity that is "in," only to swap said fad with the next up-and-coming trend. This is what I like to call "The Assembly Line Syndrome." We take the entity, spend a few fond moments with it, then part ways for another entity. Let's look at a few examples, shall we?

-Boy Bands/Pop Stars

Ugh. The very premise of their fame rests on ephemrality. Painfully so. In a day and age where I assumed boy bands were dead, they just spawn overnight with a different set of faces. That goes for Pop Stars, too. Their foundations just SCREAM for obscurity. They're perfect material for celebrity nostalgia shows like "Where Are They Now?" *cough* Justin Bieber and One Direction *cough* Sure, they're in the prime of their youth and looking spiffy NOW, but just wait. Give it ten years, minimum. There's a few options for the roads they could head down:

-Completely bankrupt
-Chronic drug addict who sneaks into their local Wendy's just to steal packets of salt that they can cut up into lines and snort because they can't afford anything legitimate.
-Current or recovering alcoholic
-All of the above

Because you don't hear of a successful former boy band member who is happily sane, sitting on a respectable amount of income. It just doesn't happen. It's the price of the tainted fame they initially signed up for.

Another example:

-Silly Bands

Let's think back two years to a time where a nonsensical man made millions overnight for his invention of Silly Bands, zany bracelets with unusual designs. The fad swept the nation and middle schoolers and high schoolers ate it up like a well-prepared meringue. They were the hottest thing on the street until the kids realized just how easily they could break, and like that, the overnight sensation had come to a close.

A closing example of a hard-hitting issue that's fading into obscurity:

-Kony 2012

Hey, remember back a few months when all of your friends on Facebook had suddenly become cosmopolitan social activists who hoped to strike down Joseph Kony with their virtual hammers? Yeah, what happened to THAT? Just like most reform notions, if you lose momentum, the snowball will stop all at once, or fall completely downhill in a Sisyphean fashion. Lord knows the actual CURRENT state of the Ugandan public.

Perhaps it's the case that as preserved as these words are, they're just as futile. Whose to say my words won't fade to obscurity just like all the rest has? If so, I'll persist with the thought of this being my fifteen minutes of fame.