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That seems to apply to pundits, influencers, etc. They're continuously trying to get in the press.
But many artists, sportsmen, businessmen will actively try to be less famous. Naomi Osaka's meltdown about press availability, "I'm just here so I don't get fined," Elon Musk's efforts to shut down the plane tracking autism kid. JD Salinger's isolation was a stock plot point in thinly-fictionalized form for decades, Field of Dreams being the most famous example. Even the Divine Emperor Augustus, upon being told that he was being told that they were praying to him in temples in the provinces as a God, shot back asking what to do if people asked him to heal their gout.
I would hate being famous. I was involved in a local political campaign, in such a way that random people asked me about it in casual conversation, and I hated not being able to stop talking to them for fear of hurting the campaign. I can't imagine having that every day for the rest of my life. Luckily I'm high end mediocre at everything.
I mean, dude named himself "godlike". I don't think he really had grounds to complain.
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Naomi Osaka seems to be a tennis player who has an Instagram account with 2,8 million followers, where she last posted a short video of herself 4 days ago. From what I can gather with some quick googling, her problem with the press conferences did not really have much (if anything) to do with being famous, just being contractually obligated to attend an event where she was subjected to questions that made her uncomfortable.
The plane tracking autism kid seems to be someone who poses for press photographs and gives interviews to various parties, probably anyone who will have him, trying to promote his various business ventures or social media projects. Or did you bring that up as an example of Elon Musk trying to be less famous? Because that does not seem plausible at all.
From a quick glance at Wikipedia, it seems that J.D. Salinger did not like to give interviews, but was giving one as soon as there was some copyright dispute that he was trying to influence.
The anecdote about emperor Augustus does not seem to be about him being famous, but about common people being silly.
There can be endeavours where being famous is required in order to succeed, and it can be an unpleasant surprise if you did not know it before hand, or you find out that you do not like being famous. But then it should be simple to just give up the thing, and anyone who does not probably has calculated that pursuing it is a net positive, despite having to be famous.
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