Quote: "In the future, everybody will be anonymous for 15 minutes."

28 Aug 2009

Quote: "In the future, everybody will be anonymous for 15 minutes."

During a recent interview with Personal Branding magazine, the writer asked me what I thought about this amusing quote, which is the inverse of Andy Wharhol's more famous one. I am not so sure. The world is filled with extroverts and introverts so maybe there's a balance somewhere. Your view? (I find it ironic by the way that this tweeter uses Obama on a stage as his Twitter background.)

Comments 14 Comments

Aug 28, 2009

Mike Russell said...

I prefer David Weinberger's "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 people." That is, until the next :// Crispin Porter + Bogusky-created Burger King promo, when 10 of the 15 get summarily un-friended in exchange for a Whopper.

Aug 28, 2009

Corvida Raven said...

I disagree. That's placing entirely too much hype on social media, technology, and the web at large. People are still using the most random screen names and I personally but up plenty of privacy blocks against my own identity when I can. The world at large will still be very much anonymous to most if not all of us.

Aug 28, 2009

wayan_vota said...

I get this quote perfectly: In the future, you will only be anonymous for 15 minutes at most. The reminder, you will be on online somehow (Twitter, Flickr, YouTube & whatever replaces them). We will all be too easy to find to be anonymous.

Aug 28, 2009

AriMelber said...

And even if it's only 15 people, per Weinberger, it's still not anonymous. But people who live in smaller towns and regions never had anonymity to begin with. I suspect social media's impact is larger here depending on where you live.

Also, I love that Obama photo (for my twitter background) cause the audience is featured so prominently!

Aug 28, 2009

Michael Sippey said...

I prefer this from Joanne at Tomorrow Museum: "In the future, a famous person will die every fifteen minutes."

Aug 29, 2009

Fred Schlegel said...

If everybody is famous then nobody is. If all our lives are on the web, then there will still need to be a spark that drives you to the top of the collective consciousness.

Aug 29, 2009

Eva said...

No matter what you prefer - its funny!

Aug 29, 2009

eva said...

it actually is a quote from the lyrics of a robbie williams-song!

Aug 30, 2009

siliconia said...

The quote is from recent Banksy's interview: "I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes."

http://swindlemagazine.com/issue08/banksy/

Aug 31, 2009

erik said...

No, that quote's from Robbie Williams - http://bit.ly/zE77w (3:23)

Aug 31, 2009

marlaynking said...

The new vogue anonymity?

Sep 12, 2009

Micah Wittman said...

siliconia and erik, and anyone else who may take an interest: I've written up a full blog post on the question of the origin of the "anonymous for 15 minutes" quote http://wittman.posterous.com/quotation-back-trace

Sep 29, 2009

siliconia said...

@micah - great, tnx!
(unfortunately I can not comment on your site :S )

Sep 29, 2009

Micah Wittman said...

siliconia, thanks! I just turned 'Anyone Can Comment' over there http://wittman.posterous.com/quotation-back-trace :)

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