Everyone gets 15 minutes of fame.
Except Reddit user Forthewolfx. He’s at 29 days and counting in his newfound status as a microcelebrity on the social news site—famous for being famous, like a less obnoxious Paris Hilton.
What did it take? Nothing. He just asked for it.
“What is your biggest secret desire that you are ashamed of telling anyone?” redditor Palinsupporter asked in the the social news site’s r/AskReddit section last month.
“I want to be famous on reddit,” Forthewolfx, apparently a 14-year-old high school student, replied.
Redditors complied.
His comment shot to the top of the thread, getting well over 6,000 upvotes—an unusually high figure for a comment.
Some lampooned the cultish notion of celebrity with subversively over-the-top comments.
“Can I collect your breath in a jar?” redditor SheepWalrus wrote.
“Can I be your creepy stalker, please?” NoDivine wrote.
Forthewolfx’s throngs of instant fans even created a section of the site devoted entirely to him, (titled, unsurprisingly r/Forthewolfx).
Posts there range from “Forthewolfx saved my pets from a burning building and watched Fight Club with me” to “[Does anyone else] think that Reddit needs a king? I think I know just the man for the job.”
Some deem Forthewolfx’s rise to fame improbable, while others, familiar with Reddit’s penchant for taking inside jokes to absurd levels, think it’s highly predictable.
But whatever you think, Forthewolfx is milking his newfound status. He’s posted to Reddit’s live question-and-answer section—the same place graced by celebrities, politicians, and generally interesting people.
“I have achieved reddit fame from doing absolutely nothing,” he wrote. “I am the forthewolfx [Ask me anything].”
That post received more than 2,000 comments. His name has been popping up throughout the site (sometimes in quite inappropriate contexts). One redditor wrote him a poem.
But with this latest moment in the sun, it appears the redditor’s fame may be waning. Reddit’s section for self-mockery, r/CircleJerk, took him on all day Tuesday.
And some groups are following his quotes around the site, downvoting everything they see.
What’s it all mean?
“There is no better feeling than waking up and finding out you are famous, it’s a hollywood christmas,” Forthewolfx wrote on Reddit earlier today.
Whether his fame lasts, at least Forthewolfx can live the rest of his life knowing that, for one month in 2011, he was a star. On Reddit.
Photo by lorenjavier
