< PreviousBY H A NN A H SM OTHER S And what the hell do I even...do about that? Okay, but then overwhelmed again. Recharged for sure. How did you feel when you came back from your last vacation? Stoked! Is that weird? Just the usual total dread. Bummed, but mostly fine! It’s Sunday night, and you have work in the morning. How’s your mood? Over the past couple of years, have you taken on a caregiver role in addition to your actual job? No, thankfully. Is this what BURNOUT feels like? Yep. IMA GE B Y ABULLAH ELMAZ 80 Chit ChatOne or two unread messages, but I’ll get to ’em. No, because everyone I know is also stressed. Every. Day. Earlier this week. I can’t even talk about it. I have a solid support system. Mondays only. I took a day off last month. What counts as rest? What’s your inbox like? When you feel overwhelmed, is there someone you lean on? How often do you consider throwing your phone into a body of water? When is the last time you unplugged and rested? C: Nope! Definitely not. Are you teaching online courses? Because I will enroll immediately. Somehow, you made it through These Times in a solid headspace, and we should all clap for that. What’s likely made all the difference are healthy habits like prioritising rest, trying to avoid work- related stuff after hours, taking time off to have fun or just chill, or being honest when your cal is too full. Putting these behaviours in place now—and trusting that they’re worth it—makes you close to indestructible. B: Not exactly, but it’s close. So, stressful work stuff and/or home stuff has you feeling like you need to regroup, eh? Your burnout prevention plan: spend time noodling on your priorities (yours, not what your boss or family or partner thinks you should prioritise), and list them out. If the word “rest” is not at the top, put it there (FYI, sitting on some grass, watching TV, or mindlessly scrolling all count). Now, give the full list a scan and ask yourself, ‘Which of these are missing from my life lately?’ Then adjust your schedule accordingly. A: Yes. Yes, it is. It’s not an actual medical condition, but burnout, caused by chronic stress, can make you feel lethargic, antisocial, irritable, or like it’s really hard to get out of bed. Powering through will just prolong or worsen symptoms. The only cure is dealing with the root of the problem, ideally with the help of a licensed therapist. As you work on that, try to get more sleep and give friends a heads-up on your mental state and that you’re digging your way out of this rut. How did you know??? All the damn time. Can’t say I need an escape, really. I don’t have to be pressured! Does work ever feel like an escape from your home life? Do you ever feel pressure to do happy hour? It’s Friday and your people want to gather. Are you in? When you wake up at 3 a.m., what’s on your mind? Whatcha doing this weekend? “I’m” “feeling” “sick.” I have to pee. Laundry, book club, pasta! Of course! Calls I ignored, a thing I said to my boss last week, my mom.... Sleeping or a mountain of chores—haven’t decided. B B A A C C 81 Chit Chat82 Chit ChatThe Fame Machine is O cially Switching Gears I LLU STR ATI O N S BY JO HAN NA GOO D MAN REP O R TIN G BY CHRISTEN A . J O H N S O N , PATR I C E P E C K , ERIN Q U INL A N , A N D CA ITLI N YO UNG Q UIST *BRB, selling my autograph as an NFT in the metaverse* 83 Chit ChatALGORITHMIC HOCK “I think a common assumption is, Oh, people just want to be famous because they’re narcissists. No, many people are pushed into putting themselves out there and commoditizing themselves because they know that, in life, a little bit of fame can be helpful. It’s about opportunity. Fame is driven by technology now. The more we move to algorithmic feeds, the more algorithms are going to be determining who’s famous. And fame has always come with pitfalls, like online hate, loss of privacy, loss of autonomy. This is something ‘real’ celebrities understand—they know they can’t control the narratives about themselves. They have entire teams to deal with that. Now, though, average people are learning these lessons on their own, and that can be incredibly traumatic. They actually can’t handle it because they aren’t narcissists. With the continued democratisation of fame, we’re going to see more people suffering the downsides.” TAYLOR LORENZ, technology columnist, Washington Post uckle up; we’re all driving this thing now. We’ve actually been at the wheel of the fame wagon ever since digital media turned “stardom” into a communal calculus of shares and streams, retweets and traf c spikes. Each smartphone glows with catalytic potential, a tiny spotlight. We can make anyone famous, including ourselves. This makes us all stakeholders in the future of celebrity. What will we make of it? Here, 15 experts pile into Cosmo’s stretch-limo time machine for a tour of tomorrow’s famescape, which is gonna look a lot like... HASHTAG TALENT MINING “With creators around the world putting up projects themselves, most mornings, I’m up early on Instagram doing what I call the hashtag method: scrolling through hashtags like #NYComedian and #NYSketchComedy to find people who aren’t on my radar. We’re going to see a major shift in power that will have more people building their own table for storytelling. We need to stay open to that to find the talent.” ERICA A. HART, CSA, casting director, That Damn Michael Che 84 Chit ChatSTAN CULTURE ON STEROIDS “Celebrities of the future won’t long for global domination. Instead, they’ll build loyal communities of mega-fans through subscription-only content, creating FOMO and a need to belong.” FiFi Orelaja, influencer talent manager, Gleam Futures LEGITIMACY AS A SIDE EFFECT ABIGAIL BARLOW, 23, and EMILY BEAR, 20, aka Barlow & Bear, aspiring musicians who wrote an unofficial Bridgerton musical, recorded the process on TikTok, and...won a Grammy for it this year EB: This shouldn’t have been possible. Our project was completely DIY—no money, no record label, no PR. And yet here we are with a Grammy. AB: The history of the music industry is that artists basically have to sign their life away and won’t own what they’ve created. EB: Having the power to post a video and immediately reach 10 million people? It’s pretty incredible. Our project would not have happened the way it did if it didn’t exist on social media. This is the way of the future—the power of the people, which is very powerful. VIRTUAL MIND MELDING “We know from history that major technological invention always affects celebrity. If you had asked someone in 1915, ‘What will fame look like five years from now?’ a good prediction would have been the explosion of silent film. My prediction now: Keep an eye on virtual reality. We know that people care about feeling close and intimate with celebrities. And with VR, you can go through the portal and inhabit another person’s perspective. It’s a form that nobody’s really figured out yet. Artificial intelligence is another area to watch. The qualities that make people people—the autonomy and unpredictability—that’s the gold standard AI is aiming for. The closer we get to that, the more likely it is that we’re going to have AI celebrities. It’s a little creepy and really exciting.” SHARON MARCUS, PhD, author of The Drama of Celebrity 85 Chit ChatTHE COMEBACK OF PURE CHARISMA “Fame has no look, sound, or speci c aesthetic anymore. It’s no longer about being the most glamorous. The main things I’m looking for are raw talent and the drive to be one of the greats.” Julissa “Trophy” Bartholomew, senior director of A&R (artists and repertoire), Interscope Records MORE MONETARY CONTROL “We often think of fame and wealth as going hand in hand, but they don’t always. A lot of times, Black and brown creators get famous but then see their work monetized by white creators. Like Jalaiah Harmon, the teen who created the Renegade dance, or Kayla Newman, aka Peaches Monroee, who came up with the phrase ‘on fleek.’ So when we think about fame and influence, we also have to think about who’s getting paid. The next generation of creators is very aware of this inequity. Some are already using social media to hold people and platforms accountable for appropriation. Last year, a group of Black creators promoted the #BlackTikTokStrike hashtag, refusing to add their work to a dance challenge until TikTok addressed its apparent preferential treatment of white users. Power is being able to make money off your creative work and being the person who has the right of control over it.” ALICE MARWICK, PHD, author of Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age THE FALL OF TOKENISM “One of our founding policies in 2015 was that we would not submit actors for casting calls until we ensured the script was an authentic representation of our community. Younger audiences now demand such representation—in gender, sexuality, race, and culture. Entertainment executives know this. They try to keep their finger on the pulse so their companies don’t disappear. With so many highly skilled marginalised actors coming onto the market, excellence is the future.” ANN THOMAS, founder and CEO, Trans Talent 86 Chit ChatA NICHE SUPERSTAR PARADOX “A person who’s famous on one platform can be unknown beyond it. Fame is becoming faster, more eeting— the celebs of tomorrow are people we haven’t even heard of yet.” MAXWELL LOSGAR, entertainment director, Cosmopolitan LINGERING HIERARCHIES BOBBY FINGER and LINDSEY WEBER, cohosts of the gossip podcast Who? Weekly BF: Social media has made it possible for anyone to build a huge audience, but it’s hard to imagine a time when traditional agents, publicists, and so on won’t be required to take someone to the A-list. LW: Every new platform will have its own set of “famous” people. It’s up to those people to transcend into more traditionally popular formats like movies, music, and TV. Even the world’s most famous TikTok star is simply a TikTok star. BF: And I simply cannot think about the metaverse. FAME AS A TEAM SPORT “Today’s internet is evolving into a form called Web3, which means we’re going from a centralised social web to a decentralised spatial environment where people can interact in new ways. The metaverse is part of that ecosystem. It’s where all the blockchain-enabled tools, from cryptocurrency and wallets to NFTs and digital goods, come together. This gives rise to storyworlds that drive community participation. In the next five years, we could see celebrities and fans unified in the creation process. For example, fans of a TV series could purchase a ‘development NFT,’ giving them the ability to interact in the writers’ room to help produce shows and earn from the content they help develop. Web3 will lead to direct engagement between celebrities and fans in ways we’ve never seen before.” FALON FATEMI, cofounder and CEO, Fireside 1. The cause- lebrity “Back in the day, you could be just a pretty person online. A lot of users now want meaning. We’re going to see more people thrust into the spotlight through social-justice pursuits. Their fame will be generated based on how they package their marginalised or stigmatised status— and ultimately represent minoritarian values.” 2. The canceled- lebrity “Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton pivoted into mainstream entertainment from explicit tapes, recouping their status by being up front, then transforming their visibility into sustained celebrity. But the parameters of what society deems acceptable shift by the week. Not everyone will get to pivot from the scandals of the future.” 3. The bore- lebrity “Another group of people who will be famous are your down-to-earth, normal types who just represent a slice of life. They’ll rise to prominence by producing a very comforting, slow hum of content. It’s funny because it sounds so boring and plain, but it’s hard to find boring and plain on the internet.” CRYSTAL ABIDIN, PhD, digital anthropologist and ethnographer of internet cultures The Stars You’ll See in 2032 MORE BLACK WOMEN MOGULS “A lot of people think of writing, directing, and performing when we talk about diversifying TV and film, but the business side matters too. Decision-makers like agents, lawyers, publicists, managers—do they understand your culture and motivations? Organisations like the National Black Public Relations Society and Women of Color Unite are making headway in diversifying these spaces. Change is slow, but it’s coming.” PAMELA CHINAWAH, multicultural entertainment publicist QUO TE S HA VE BEEN EDITED F OR LENG TH AND CLARIT Y. 87 Chit ChatAn actual useful guide to Purple Fluorite Banded Tower, Dhs799 Rose quartz facial roller, Dhs199 Large Amethyst Cluster Spheres. Prices start at Dhs1,000 Oyster Shell, starting at Dhs55. Moon Quartz Cuff, Dhs499. 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