Way, way back in the day—1972, to be precise—Judy Blume published a children’s novel called Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. To be honest, even though Bloom’s books were pretty popular when I was a kid, I never actually read it. But Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing still strikes me as an evocative title, one that suggests a certain kind of unwanted anonymity that children are forced to suffer through.
Or, at least that’s the way it was before the Internet. Now even kids can be celebrities. And you don’t even have to wait until fourth grade to get started.
Let me explain.
Earlier this school year, my son came home with a story that—even though I know our culture is drenched in celebrity worship—nevertheless stunned me. He was excited because one of his classmates, whom I’ll call “Sasha,” had signed one of this Pokémon cards. In fact, she’d spent the entire recess busily signing cards for all kinds of apparently star-struck students.
“Why was that so exciting?” I asked.
“Because Sasha has her own YouTube channel where she unwraps Pokémon cards!” That made Sasha something of a third-grade celebrity, right in their own class.
If you don’t have children or haven’t strolled through YouTube’s truly mindboggling cornucopia of videos lately, you might not know that videos featuring people unwrapping products of all kinds are a big deal—up to and including unwrapping Pokémon cards.
That, apparently, is what Sasha does. And her mere presence on YouTube was enough to lift her out of the indiscriminate masses of otherwise anonymous third-grade “nothings” into the rarefied air of minor celebritydom. Having her own YouTube channel rocketed her into a different category, one in which kids at school—according to my son—lined up to have her sign Pokémon cards like she was an honest-to-goodness star.
When my friends and I were growing up, I’m sure we harbored dreams of being famous that most kids probably entertain at some point. But these were vague, unfocused visions, maybe of being a rock star or playing in the NFL or being an actor. They were daydreams, really, and they never went much beyond that. With few exceptions, none of us really expected to turn those dreams of stardom into reality.
What’s different with the advent of the Internet age is that kids today don’t necessarily have to “settle” for fuzzy visions of fame somewhere way down the road. They can be “famous” now, even if said fame consists of nothing more than signing Pokémon cards at recess.
And some of these kids do go on to become bona fide Internet celebrities. Take the YouTube channel dubbed EvanTubeHD, for instance. It features a young boy (perhaps seven or eight) named Evan who reviews all manner of toys and video games. The videos are skillfully produced and edited—obviously there are adults involved at some level, and presumably at least one of Evan’s parents—and the number of views some of them get is simply staggering.
Evan’s review of Angry Birds Space Softee Dough (think Play Doh, only angrier and more birdlike), has racked up nearly 62 million views. That’s the kind of territory normally inhabited by pop superstars, not children talking about toys.
But that’s the world our kids are growing up in today. It’s a world in which they’re told from a very young age that anything they do is worth filming and sharing—even something as seemingly innocuous as unwrapping trading cards and sharing what you got.
No one has to settle for being a lowly third-grade nothing in the Internet age.
For better, or worse.
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