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277haunts. With a bit more work, that teen could get your home address and your current employer. But it%u2019s the ability to access the texture of everyday life that makes this power so awesome. It%u2019s possible to get inside the head of just about anyone who has a presence on the social Web, because chances are they are broadcasting their emotional states in real time to the entire world. . . .%u2022 %u2022 %u2022Never before in history have so many people been under the gaze of so many strangers. Humans evolved in small groups, defined by kinship: those we knew, knew us. And our imaginative capabilities allowed us to know strangers%u2014kings and queens, heroes of legend, gods above%u2014all manner of atleast partly mythic personalities to whom we may have felt as intimately close to as kin. For the vast majority of our species%u2019 history, those were the two principal categories of human relations: kin and gods. Those we know who know us, grounded in mutual social interaction, and those we know who don%u2019t know us, grounded in our imaginative powers.But now consider a third category: people we don%u2019t know and who somehow know us. They pop up in mentions, comments, and replies; on subreddits, message boards, or dating apps. Most times, it doesn%u2019t even seem noteworthy: you look down at your phone and there%u2019s a notification that someone you don%u2019t know has liked a post. You might feel a little squirt of endorphin in the brain, an extremely faint sense of achievement. Yet each instance of it represents something new as a common human experience, for their attention renders us tiny gods. The Era of Mass Fame is upon us.If we define fame as being known to many people one doesn%u2019t know, then it is an experience as old as human civilization. Stretching back to the first written epic, Gilgamesh (whose protagonist was, in fact, an actual king), history, particularly as it is traditionally taught, is composed almost entirely of the exploits of the famous: Nefertiti, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Muhammad, and Joan of Arc.But as the critic Leo Braudy notes, in his 1987 study, %u201cThe Frenzy of Renown,%u201d %u201cAs each new medium of fame appears, the human image it conveys is intensified and the number of individuals celebrated expands.%u201d Industrial technology%u2014newspapers and telegraphs, followed by radio, film, and TV%u2014created an ever-larger category of people who might be known by millions the world over: politicians, film stars, singers, authors. This category was orders of magnitude larger than it had been 20This 2019 cartoon by Ellie Black echoes the Miranda warning given to criminal suspects. The warning begins with the lines %u201cYou have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.%u201dHow does this cartoon satirize the situation Chris Hayes describes, in which %u201c[t]he previous limiting conditions on what%u2019s private and what%u2019s public, on who can know you, have been lifted%u201d (par. 23)? What is the difference between attention and true recognition or connection? How has the meaning of %u201cknowing%u201d someone changed, now that so many interactions take place online?33Ellie Black / The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank5 Chris HayesCopyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.