I was in the first grade and my face was picked out of a school picture and used as a greeting card for all the teachers in the school district that year. That was my 15 minutes of fame. Like some of the users below, I may have peaked too soon. Check out some AskReddit users talking about their 15 minutes in the spotlight.
1. Breaking Booger News!
A TV weatherman did one of those “visiting a local school” segments at my school so our whole class was on TV. Of course the one time they show me on camera was when I was picking my nose.
2. Winner Winner
I won the fifth grade bookmark contest in fifth grade. They put free copies of the bookmark on the desk in the library with my name on it. I peaked too soon.
3. Dirty Water
I recreated the SpaceX rocket landing in my friend’s pool, Elon Musk called it cute, and I got a lot of unsolicited pool cleaning tips.
4. Partying with Strangers
Some friends and I were partying at a crappy motel on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon a long while back, the night before a big festival, when a big unmarked tour bus pulling a trailer parked in the parking lot. A bunch of rock star looking dudes got out and stretched and started smoking cigarettes.
I drunkenly yelled at them to come party with us and next thing I knew, 8 guys are piling out of the bus and headed up the stairs. they all go into my hotel room and we start taking shots and drinking beers when someone finally decides to ask what band they were with.
It was some guys who at the time we’d never heard of, called Avenged SevenFold. Super nice dudes, the singer called my brother on my cellphone just to say hi and let him know they were opening up for Korn the next day (my brother loved Korn) Anyway, that was cool…Also Sept. 2016 I had a picture published in National Geographic.
5. Falling Dominos
I tried to build the world’s largest domino pyramid, failed spectacularly, and the video went viral. A Japanese TV station interviewed me about it, too.
6. Truly 15 Minutes
Back when the Shia LaBeouf “Just do it!” meme was popular, I used it as a cosplay at Anime Expo. I had a large green cardboard slab tied to my back for the green screen effect and I spent days memorizing his speech. I spent about ten hours that day repeating the speech endlessly and doing videos/photo ops with people. The meme was already popular enough for people to be shouting it randomly in the hallways anyway, so it exploded even worse whenever I’d walk through.
Eventually security was called on me because I was “inciting riots” of people shouting “Just do it!” and they were getting complaints of the noise triggering some people’s panic attacks. It was an interesting 15 minutes of fame.
7. Hairy Art
Maybe there’s been something else but this is the most story-able: In the summer of 2012 the movie The Dark Knight Rises came out and to celebrate I decided I’d have a creative twist on cosplay as Batman. I shaved the Bat symbol into my chest. Pretty dang good logo shave job if you ask me. I posted the pic on social media, went to the movie, etc, later the pic blew up with tons of friends and family sharing it all around. It got posted to a few of those crappy mid-internet history sites or whatever, as well as a ton of people in my city seeing it. I got recognized at the grocery store and the gas station and a few other places as the “Batman chest hair guy”. What a legacy.
8. Q-List
Right when Pokemon GO came out, I hosted a Lure Party (keep in mind, I’m an American living in Canada, so I had legal access to the game, iTunes account and all, a week before Canadians did, so I could do microtransactions at will) downtown in my city and posted it on Reddit as an open invite.
I didn’t expect anything more than five people. No, hundreds of people showed up. And so did Vice News. And so did the two local news networks.
So, that happened.
Other than that, I refer to myself as a Q-list celebrity because of my weekly music radio programme on a station in the same city.
9. Accomplice
Someone got arrested for murder and named me and several other people to the police and a Newspaper. They had no idea what he was doing it for or how he knew everyone so everyone got interviewed as they expected us to be accomplices. That theory went out the window when they discovered I was 9, someone was 2, and another guy was 87 in a wheelchair on oxygen and missing a leg. Turns out the guy just read names off something outside our Catholic school at the church and remebered some random names and just threw them out to mess with police.
My name was on page 4 of our local paper in bold.
10. “I remember…that!”
I fell off a 150ft cliff in 2012 and was the talk of my city small city for awhile. Whenever I tell my story to people they always go “holy moly that was you? I remember reading that.”
11. Moist Towelette
Harry Styles threw me his towel at a One Direction concert and every girl around me looked like they wanted to eat me alive. Thousands of beady eyes staring at me in contempt. It was terrifying so I shoved it down my shirt to avoid any snatching potential cause those ladies were ready to attack.
12. Model Status
I made it to the front page of Reddit (a popular social media site) from posting a picture of myself sitting in a chair looking rather dapper rather than in my wheelchair. It helped me with my insecurities about being physically disabled and I’m actually going to be meeting up with people who offered to do a free photoshoot of me when I posted that here soon now that the weather is nicer.
13. Faceless Friends
It was in High School when me and a group of friends decided to get Morphsuit (basically full body elastic suits, even covers your face). We were basically like mimes going around our busy town never talking to not give away our identity and did dumb stuff.
My favorite was when we had to cross the street and played leap frog across the crosswalk until the timer was over. Even a local politician started to like us and use our popularity to as a way for him to get a message across and get popularity. Everyone loved us and took pictures but no one could ever figure out who we were. It was pretty great.
14. Whats in a name?
One time all my friends start tweeting my name and using it as a hashtag, so then other followers that knew of me starting tweeting my name. THEN random people started tweeting and retweeting the tweets saying things like “who is philophobya?” etc. and then I was trending in my city!
15. Death wish
I used to work at a Chinese restaurant and uploaded a photo to a funny/joke website of a bill that I had accidentally given to a table. The husband was allergic to shellfish and one of the bar/kitchen staff had typed ‘NO SEAFOOD OR HE DIE’ and left it on the bill for the customer to see. That got so many votes.
16. Early Trolling
Back when the first Harry Potter movies came out, Warner Brothers had a forum on their official movie site dedicated to HP discussion. I was a massive Harry Potter fan and instantly became highly active on the forums. We’d write fan fiction (thankfully lost to the annals of time), discuss theories, have fake Yule Balls…if I ever wondered at that time why I was unpopular in school, I don’t wonder now.
In any case, I was very well known on the forums. I’m a (comedy) writer now and was budding then so my writing stood out in the fan fiction threads. About six months into my participation there, people began to impersonate me by creating usernames almost identical to mine.
I had at least three imposters that were pervasive, all of whom did their best to “take me down.” It was the early days of internet trolling, and literally was mostly people using my almost-name to write bad, childish comments.
Hopefully I become famous in the future for my actual career, but for now – that’s my legacy.
17. Star in the Making
I made some lego stop motion videos for school projects in 7th grade, and my history teacher apparently enjoyed it so much he showed it to his friends, one of whom was an employee at an advertising company. In 8th grade, I was hired as a freelance worker to film three 15-second commercials for a car dealership in Pennsylvania, which I’m told then aired on local TV. I love that history teacher.
18. Drumming Don’t
I was drumming at a Christmas in the park show, at least 10,000 people there and broadcast to at least another 500,000? I did a fill and messed up…
19. $35K Shot
Back in November I hit a half court shot at a Lakers game and won 35k. Did a live interview during the game on TV, then a radio interview, then another with a Lakers.com reporter. Next day I did a spot with the local news where I made a few more half court shots.
Took pictures with a few hundred people after the game since I got to keep the big check.
20. Running Perks
One week before my high school graduation when I was still only 18 I did my first ever Triathlon (Kona Ironman 70.3) and I was the youngest athlete in the race. I made it in newspapers in Hawaii. My age and it’s significance was announced when I crossed the finish line.
I went from being overweight and not able to jog half a mile without crying and throwing up to doing a 70 mile race in a climate completely different than my own (I live in Arizona) in about a year.
Also, this was less work but probably about the same amount of fame, I’ve known the current Tempe City Councilman for a few years. We met while volunteering at the AZ ironman. He started a running shirt company called “Tempe Ice Apparel” that makes shirts that keep your core temp down even in 115 degrees and he asked me to model for it and I’m on the website and Facebook page and Instagram. Last I checked I was in the profile for one of those.
Everything kinda went really down hill after that race but I had my moments. So that’s a thing.
21. Fighting Fan Family
If you pause an episode of WCW Monday Nitro from 1998, there’s a few frames as the camera pans across the crowd before it cuts away, and for those few frames you can see little me and my family sitting in the crowd.
22. High School Rock Band
Sophomore year in high school. The entire high school (1,000+) was in the auditorium for the talent show. The rhythm guitar player was out sick and my friend’s older brother (a senior) asked me to fill in.
I learned Highway to Hell in a couple of hours and we rocked it out during the program. When I started head banging a little, the crowd went nuts. I never felt so alive. It was a high that last for hours afterward.
People kept approaching me afterward about it that day, but everything was a blur.
23. Resume Builder
I called Martin Shkreli’s cell number 40 times (this was before he really blew up) and he finally answered on Facetime, demanded my name, and blocked my number. I put on my resume that I’m hated by America’s most hated man.
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