Famously Familiar

Part title

Please, God. Don't let anybody recognize him this time. Inconspicuously, he tried to sneak a peek from under his baseball cap. It would have been easier to just take it off, but he couldn't risk being recognized again. It had gotten him in too much trouble already. Okay, so it looks like no one is really paying attention. Who knows, he might actually be able to make it out of the bus unseen. If only people would put away their phones. Almost everyone in the bus, with the exception of a few elderly people, seemed to have a phone in their hand - something that wouldn't have worried him, if it hadn't been for the cameras on those phones, cameras that could be turned on with just a single swipe and tap. He really didn't want to be caught on camera again. Once had been more than enough. And the idea of having history repeating itself definitely wasn't good for his anxiety level.
Nowadays it seemed as if everybody was an amateur cameraman - or camera person, to keep it politically correct. Not that everybody was cut out for the job, but that didn't seem to stop them from trying - and trying some more. Some people almost seemed to be glued to their phones. He couldn't remember the number of times he had seen young girls walking on the street, holding their phones in front of them and making all kind of faces to the camera. The puckered lips seemed to be a favourite, but it was a close call with the finger casually in the mouth, that is, if they weren't busy turning around, trying to find their good side. You would almost think that they were auditioning to become a professional model. If only they would realize that the people that would be seeing their videos were most likely not scouts, but pervy old men, scouring the internet for videos of hot young girls. God, he sure hoped that his little niece would not become one of those girls.
At least those girls weren't really a danger to the people around them, unlike the tourists with their selfie sticks. Living close to the city's main tourist attractions, he encountered tourists on a regular basis, and he had lost count of the number of times he had almost been hit over the head with a selfie stick. Some people seemed obsessed with filming everything they saw, although you could argue that they really didn't see anything other than their camera screen. He always wondered what they would do with all those hours of film. Poor family members, who would be forced to watch those videos. He didn't mind watching his family's and friends' vacation videos, as long as the videos were cut to just a few minutes. It was nice to get a picture, but he didn't have to see every mountain they had climbed or every trail they had walked.
He had never thought about taking up filming himself, just like it had never occurred to him to open a Twitter or Instagram account. He just wasn't been able to picture anybody being interested in what he did on a daily basis, especially since his life wasn't any different from the rest of the population. He would get up in the morning, go to work, have dinner, maybe do some exercising, and then go to bed, only to repeat it all over again the next day. Okay, that might be putting it too simply. But his life had just been ordinary. And he had liked that. He couldn't wait for his life to get back to ordinary again.
     He knew that some people would be horrified by that thought. After all, ordinary lives didn't pay the bill, at least not when you were a YouTuber trying to get rich and famous. If you wanted to make it big on YouTube, you needed subscribers and you needed likes, which meant that you needed content - interesting content. And ordinary simply wasn't interesting, at least not for long. So people would go through great lengths to demonstrate that their lives were anything but ordinary - well, some people, that was. There was also a large group that would just try to lure people with a catching title or a thumbnail that they had 'borrowed' from somewhere else. Not surprisingly, these people weren't the most successful out there. If you really wanted to become a star, it appeared that dedication was key - dedication to regularly uploading new videos and dedication to coming up with something new and interesting every time; although the terms 'new' and 'interesting' were highly subjective, he had discovered. What was that saying again? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? He couldn't remember how many video recommendations he had received for 'the best prank ever'. And he had actually started to pity the family and friends of some of those YouTubers. The so-called pranks were often nothing more than someone being annoying for an entire day, copying every word, trying to scare someone every 15 minutes, or just hiding random things. If someone would do that to him, he would be so mad. And it was clear that some of the 'victims' of the pranks shared that sentiment. But that didn't seem to stop the pranksters. On the contrary, they almost seemed to enjoy it. Then again, arguments seemed to be the fastest way to get more views, especially when it concerned an argument between YouTubers. It was like a real-life soap: you just couldn't stop watching. And then of course there was the group of people benefiting from the argument. If you didn't have anything interesting to report on your own life, what better way to get more views by commenting on other people's lives?
He always felt these people took the easy way out, sitting in the comfort of their own home, just expressing some random thoughts. In his opinion, they didn't really deserve a lot of attention. People should at least make some form of effort, really earning their views and consequently their money; although there were of course also people who went a little too far in their efforts to make money. Clearly, money made people do crazy things, and on YouTube that wasn't any different. The craziest one he had seen so far was a guy who had covered himself entirely in peanut butter and then had gone to a dog park. He had really wondered what had gone through that guy's head. Why would he have thought that that would actually be a good idea? And how had he even come up with the idea?
Somehow, when internet or social media were involved, boundaries seemed to be flying out the window. Often, anonymity was cited as the cause for lack of moral standards. But he believed that to be too easy. The hunger for fame seemed to be an equally important trigger. But whatever set it off, it made for some bad choices. He remembered his conversation with a colleague who was a volunteer fireman. His colleague had been on quite a rant about those boneheaded bystanders who felt the need to get out their cameras and film the scene of an accident - no matter how gruesome - and then even had the audacity to post their pictures and videos online. Honestly, he hadn't blamed his colleague for being so upset. The guy risked his life, and not to forget his mental well-being, to help people in need and the last thing that he should have to be concerned about was amateur paparazzi. His colleague had explained that nowadays they no longer cut people out of their car when they had died on scene. Instead, they would move the car, with the deceased still in it, to their warehouse where they could remove the body without the risk of being caught on camera. The era of cameraphones had definitely set off a change in how the fire department did their job.
He had never understood the need to take out a camera when witnessing an accident - especially when there was an option to help. A long time ago, he had read a story in the paper about a refugee who had set himself on fire on a busy square. There had been lots of people around, but instead of helping and trying to put out the flames, they had filmed the man - as if it was something that they might want to re-watch. At that time, he had considered it to be an unfortunate turn of events, believing it to be an exception. But nowadays, he knew better. It had not been an exception, as he had experienced first-hand. What had shocked him the most was that this time around it had concerned a child, a toddler.