Chris Hayes

But fame is the experience of receiving social attention from people you do not know and at scale. Now, this is a very strange experience. And the reason I know this is because I happen to live it. And so in the sort of progression of civilization, you start to have famous people. And more and more people can be famous with the dawn of industrial media, movie stars, pop stars, all this stuff.

But it's still a very, very, very tiny percentage of people that can be known by strangers, that can have social attention being paid to them by strangers. That just generally doesn't happen for most people. And most people –

But it's still a very, very, very tiny percentage of people that can be known by strangers, that can have social attention being paid to them by strangers. That just generally doesn't happen for most people. And most people –

But it's still a very, very, very tiny percentage of people that can be known by strangers, that can have social attention being paid to them by strangers. That just generally doesn't happen for most people. And most people –

are going to have received social attention from people they have relationships, and they might put their social attention on all sorts of public figures, the president or celebrities or other people, but they're not getting it from people they don't know. It just is a very tiny sliver of humans that can have that experience.

are going to have received social attention from people they have relationships, and they might put their social attention on all sorts of public figures, the president or celebrities or other people, but they're not getting it from people they don't know. It just is a very tiny sliver of humans that can have that experience.

are going to have received social attention from people they have relationships, and they might put their social attention on all sorts of public figures, the president or celebrities or other people, but they're not getting it from people they don't know. It just is a very tiny sliver of humans that can have that experience.

And now it is utterly democratized for everyone for the first time in human history. I mean, it's genuinely new, genuinely a break, has not happened before. Anyone can have... enormous social attention from oceans of strangers on them. You can have a viral moment online. You can cultivate a following.

And now it is utterly democratized for everyone for the first time in human history. I mean, it's genuinely new, genuinely a break, has not happened before. Anyone can have... enormous social attention from oceans of strangers on them. You can have a viral moment online. You can cultivate a following.

And now it is utterly democratized for everyone for the first time in human history. I mean, it's genuinely new, genuinely a break, has not happened before. Anyone can have... enormous social attention from oceans of strangers on them. You can have a viral moment online. You can cultivate a following.

This experience of social attention from strangers, precisely because it is so at odds, I think, with our inheritance, is weird and alienating. And there's a bunch of ways it is. One of the ways it's alienating is that... We are conditioned to care what the people we love think about us. We're conditioned to care if we've hurt someone that we have a relationship with.

This experience of social attention from strangers, precisely because it is so at odds, I think, with our inheritance, is weird and alienating. And there's a bunch of ways it is. One of the ways it's alienating is that... We are conditioned to care what the people we love think about us. We're conditioned to care if we've hurt someone that we have a relationship with.

This experience of social attention from strangers, precisely because it is so at odds, I think, with our inheritance, is weird and alienating. And there's a bunch of ways it is. One of the ways it's alienating is that... We are conditioned to care what the people we love think about us. We're conditioned to care if we've hurt someone that we have a relationship with.

But it's very different if you've insulted or hurt someone, just a total stranger who's saying mean things to you or you've disappointed them or they're angry at you. That comes into you psychologically indistinguishably. From it coming from kin or lover or friend.

But it's very different if you've insulted or hurt someone, just a total stranger who's saying mean things to you or you've disappointed them or they're angry at you. That comes into you psychologically indistinguishably. From it coming from kin or lover or friend.

But it's very different if you've insulted or hurt someone, just a total stranger who's saying mean things to you or you've disappointed them or they're angry at you. That comes into you psychologically indistinguishably. From it coming from kin or lover or friend.

Truly. There's a kind of clash here between the data set we're trained on, if you will. Right. And what we're encountering. And the reason, again, this is a place that I really know, right? I... didn't used to have people come up to me on the street, and then I became famous enough that people did.

Truly. There's a kind of clash here between the data set we're trained on, if you will. Right. And what we're encountering. And the reason, again, this is a place that I really know, right? I... didn't used to have people come up to me on the street, and then I became famous enough that people did.

Truly. There's a kind of clash here between the data set we're trained on, if you will. Right. And what we're encountering. And the reason, again, this is a place that I really know, right? I... didn't used to have people come up to me on the street, and then I became famous enough that people did.

And I've experienced all the ways that that's strange and alienating, and I've given a lot of thought, partly as a kind of full-time psychological undertaking so that I don't go crazy, because I do think it's kind of distorting and madness-inducing in its own way. And what we've done is basically democratized the madness-inducing aspects of celebrity for the entire society.