Consider the following comments on fame.
We grant strangers our attention and then resent them for taking it.
A culture that rewards being known above being good will produce people skilled only at being seen.
Fame is a mask that eats into the face.
John Updike
The famous are owned in small pieces by everyone who has heard of them.
We no longer ask whether a person is worth knowing, only whether they are known.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A defensible thesis is that fame has detached from achievement, so that a society once organised to honour the accomplished now manufactures recognition as an end in itself. Open by granting that public attention can serve a purpose, drawing notice to real talent, courage or service that deserves to be seen. Then complicate it: when visibility becomes the prize, the incentive shifts from doing something worthy to merely being noticed, and the spectacle replaces the substance. A strong third move considers what the audience gains and loses, since we lavish intimacy on strangers while the people actually in our lives compete with screens. Caution: resist the lazy contempt for all fame, which ignores how the same machinery that inflates the trivial can also amplify the genuinely important.