
A philosophy-quoting homeless man in China has fled internet fame - flippyhead
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-internet-was-obsessed-with-this-philosophy-quoting-homeless-man-in-china-now-hes-fled-the-fame/2019/04/01/519e43e2-5220-11e9-bdb7-44f948cc0605_story.html
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the_fonz
From my measly perspective, fame suuucks... there's really no upside.
Anonymous obscurity seems a better camouflage rather than people getting up in
someone's personal business documenting their every move, criticizing their
every breath, treating them differently, expecting to impose on their
emotional reserves and time, or acting goofy/toadyingly around them. All
people put on pants one leg at a time unless they're missing legs or wearing a
kilt. ;)

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starpilot
Will Smith's contrary view is that fame is great. You get treated better
everywhere and people listen to your mundane opinions on anything. The pain of
being ignored or rejected is vastly reduced, whether it's in your personal
life, career etc.

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BMorearty
I hadn't heard that was his POV. I'm surprised. I've always thought fame would
be terrible. You can't walk down the street in peace. You can't shop in peace.
You can't eat at a restaurant in peace.

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steve19
Money seems to have all the benefits of fame and few of the disadvantages.
Having $100m in the bank confers all those advantages without being harassed
on the street.

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netsharc
Well, with fame, you walk into a fancy restaurant, you get a table. With
money, you're still another anonymous schmuck.

I guess if you have that much money you can hire someone to call ahead and say
"This man's net worth is this much, and he would like to have a table in half
an hour.". Or to be less crass, they can rattle off your impressive
CV/portfolio and the restaurant would get the idea.

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steve19
You never been out for a meal with a rich person huh? Guarantee you a rich
person (where rich is $50m+)can get that table faster than the b-list sitcom
actor who is in front of her in the queue. She dosnt need a CV, just needs her
wallet.

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ZhuanXia
Fame is a disfigurement. As the costs of fame increase, how will this effect
the distribution of people who seek to do great things? This is probably a
much more important question than many things we worry about.

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BucketSort
Seeking to do great things is not linked to fame. The public is generally
ignorant of every great person alive today, they just see the people who need
to be seen because it supports their ventures.

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ismail
fully agree. People conflate fame with impact. Everyone’s version of impact
may be different but having Impact does not necessarily lead to the other.

Consider the case of Howard Thurman, not nearly as famous as Martin Luther
king Jr[0], or Nelson Mandela[1]. Yet highly influential on them, and they
went on to catalyse massive change.

So his impact if we consider social change, was massive and far outpaced his
actual fame.

[0] he mentored Martin Luther King and otherS [1] Mandela came out of prison
with a completely different philosophy to when he went in.Mandela appears to
have been highly influenced by by his writing while in prison.

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BucketSort
So many examples of this. This highly charming piece by a former IAS director
goes into this so well:
[https://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf](https://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf)

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winkeyless
I know a similar story of a semi-homeless man also from Chengdu who have been
living in a university campus and attending advanced math classes for years. A
guy with virtually no possessions except curiosity. It was pre-internet so
only locals knew about him. The university even offered him a job in the
cafeteria so he could feed himself.

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drcode
[https://outline.com/YdhRj9](https://outline.com/YdhRj9)

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canjobear
Not a word about the content of his philosophy...

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tim333
The SCMP has:

>In one of these videos, the scavenger was filmed discussing the merits of
Liao Fan’s Four Lessons, a Ming dynasty work from the 16th century, and the
Analects.

I presume in Chinese

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0db532a0
Here's a nice, uplifting film about a philosophy-quoting homeless man from
Manchester who flees to London. One of my favourites.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_(1993_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_\(1993_film\))

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tobych
I'm surprised this piece doesn't mention The Life of Brian:

Followers: "Speak to us master, speak to us!"

Brian: "Go away!"

Follower: "How shall we go away master?"

(59 minutes into the movie)

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winkeyless
(Group running)

Forrest Gump: “I’m tired. I think I’m gonna go home”

The followers: “What are we supposed to do?”

