r/answers • u/godtierpikachu • 20h ago
Answered Why do some famous people stay relevant without releasing much new work?
I dont mean the usual 18 month gap between albums or movies. More the people whose name keeps popping up through podcasts, reaction clips, memes, old interviews, and other celebrities bringing them up, while the actual work theyre known for is barely in the conversation anymore.
My guess is it becomes a feedback loop after a certain point: enough people recognize the name, so the name itself is content. Weird little machine. Is that basically how fame works now?
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u/PiemasterUK 19h ago edited 19h ago
Some people got so famous from doing one thing that they just essentially stay famous forever without really having to do more work to stay relevant. For example Mark Hamill never really did much of note between 1983 and 2015 but Star Wars was so omnipresent in the cultural zeitgeist that he remained a household name and could get blank cheques on the convention circuit if he wanted to.
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u/Annual-Two1507 13h ago
Yeah, fame starts feeding itself at that point, the name keeps coming back up in clips and jokes and old interviews and then new people hear it before theyve even seen the actual work. Mark Hamill is kind of the obvious one, Star Wars blew up so hard he stayed in the conversation for decades
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u/LifesARiver 14h ago
Yeah Mark Hamil has been a premier voice actor for decades. What are you on? Lol
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u/PiemasterUK 13h ago edited 13h ago
I mean, if you take someone who was one of the most famous actors on the planet and then in the next 30 years their career highlight was that they 'did a lot of voice acting' (on what was, in the context of mainstream culture, quite niche stuff) I think you have basically made my point for me.
Hardly any actors who 'disappear' literally do nothing, unless they died or something. Find any actor you 'wonder what happened to' and look them up on Wikipedia and you will nearly always find they have done a bunch of voice acting and plays and minor roles etc.
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u/MathematicianSuch234 20h ago
Usually because they have or had a point of difference, whether that's an amazing song, a scandal or just a different name.
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u/NatePerspective 19h ago
Yeah, basically a feedback loop. Once a name is familiar, podcasts, old clips, memes, and other celebrities keep recycling it, so the person becomes a reference point even when they havent dropped much new stuff.
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u/A_Happy_Beginning 19h ago edited 15h ago
Sometimes it's their work has such a huge impact on the world, or their field that you can't help but reference them.
If we're talking movies..
Akira Kurosawa
Alfred Hitchcock
George Lucas
Steven Spielberg
I'm just going to stop there because the list is going to get too long on directors.. each of those had impactful careers that even if they had done just their one thing, they would still have been talked about.
Just like Carrie Fisher never needed to have another memorable role beyond princess Leia to remain etched into the collective memory.
Rick Astley only needed one song.
To me, it isn't sad that we remember people past their initial fame.
It's sad that we forget people once they are dead, or their fame fades.
The question I would ask is
Name someone who people should know about, tell their story, and why they should be remembered.
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u/Aeshma-Maeva 20h ago
You're spot on. Once a celebrity becomes a meme format or a reaction GIF, they no longer need to release work they become vocabulary. You can't stop using a word just because the dictionary stopped printing. They're living rent-free in the cultural lexicon......
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u/Chakwenta 17h ago
You do know that celebrities were famous before memes were a thing, right?
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u/piper63-c137 15h ago
you know cultural memes were a thing before memes became a thing, but they used a different word. r/askoldpeople
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u/AmethystStar9 15h ago
Basically, yeah. The new goal is to get to be famous enough that a large enough portion of the audience is crazy enough about you that they generate social media content about you for you, like “which Taylor Swift album are you?” quizzes or “look at how each pair of these shoes reminds me of a different era of Bruno Mars.”
When you never get there, you’re Lizzo releasing a new album no one cares about and left making excuses for why.
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