Can you use notoriety in a positive sense?
Let me tell you the story of Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G. He branded his body of work as notorious to the point that his Biopic was called Notorious.
Biggie broke through into the mainstream in the early 1990s, and his career embodies the gangsta rap of the era. Both his life and death will forever be tied to the life and death of fellow rapper Tupac Shakur.
These two men defined the music industry in the first half of the 1990s, escalating a media-created East Coast/West Coast feud that escalated into war.
While the negativity is what got glamorized by the media, both men are well known for being philanthropic activists who did arguably more net positive for their communities than negative.
The community Biggie represented was very underrepresented in the media at the time. He was a hero to a lot of people, and I’ll never forget when the party broke out to his music during the man’s funeral procession.
The antihero is a powerful image in our culture, and we often admire people for notoriety. Biggie and 2Pac were also the precursor to Eminem and the Attitude Era of professional wrestling.
Stone Cold Steve Austin defined this era with his anti-hero persona. The world was tired of watching American heroes like Hulk Hogan fight cheesy foreign enemies.
We wanted to see someone beat the crap out of their boss.
Tell me you’ve never wanted to chug a beer, kick your boss in the stomach, then drop him with a stunner before bouncing up to throw two aggressive middle fingers in his face.
No?
Well you’re a better person than I am. Congratulations. This is probably why I’m so notorious myself.
And I’m not alone.
There’s a million of us just like me
Who cuss like me, who just don’t give a fuck like me
Who dress like me, walk, talk and act like me
And just might be the next best thing, but not quite me
Even in modern times, notoriety can add up to a lot of success. It may not be for you, but 6ix9ine is living his best life and has seen a lot at the young age of 25.
But we can hardly blame the new generations for pushing boundaries, and it’s certainly not limited to the genres I’m sticking to.
Comedian Lenny Bruce was just as likely to get arrested at a performance as any gangsta rapper and much earlier.
Don Rickles is a notorious insult comic who pulled no punches against President Regan.
One man’s notorious villain has always been another’s chivalrous hero. Robinhood is an old example of a mythical antihero. He robbed the rich and gave to the poor, so, like many real-life criminals like serial killers, etc, some love and some hate him.
The Robinhood app use this story to explain its app. It then became notorious for another reason.
When Reddit’s WallStreetBets community targeted GameStop, AMC, and other heavily shorted stocks for a short squeeze, the company Robinhood gained notoriety for cutting off trading.
It went back on its promise to rob the rich to give to the poor by literally doing the opposite. In doing so, it became notorious in a lot of investing circles, but that didn’t stop the company from going public on the same year.
It grew into a $33 billion company today from $11.2 billion a year ago.Robinhood snags third mega-investment of the year, boosting valuation to $11.2 billionRobinhood announced a $200 million funding round, boosting its valuation to $11.2 billion.https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/08/17/robinhood-announces-another-mega-round-valuation-soars-to-11point2b.html
That means all that notoriety gave the company’s early investors a 3x return in one year. In that same year, Amazon grew from $1.63 trillion to $1.76 trillion.
That notoriety of the congressional hearings, the outcry over shutting down trading, none of it did anything to stop Robinhood from giving its investors an exponentially better return over the last year than Amazon investors got.
Money isn’t the root of a successful life though – we should all strive to reach a state of enlightenment like notorious troll Mohandas Ghandi.
This notorious prick spent a lot of time in prison for breaking laws as a form of nonviolent resistance. He caused a lot of divisive opinions and was inevitably assassinated.
Reaching a state of enlightenment and promoting world peace at a time when the Nazis were trying to dominate the world didn’t stop Ghandi from dying the same way Biggie did, although he did last a lot longer.
It’s probably because he was an attorney (which we all know to be notoriously dishonest). Let’s split the difference on another enlightened proponent of peace who became notorious.
Much of the recorded testimony of Jesus Christ happened in court. The government always keeps better records than common folk.
He was notorious for his time like most enlightened people just for having an opinion. One could make the argument that 2Pac, Biggie, Lenny Bruce, and the rest of this motley crew acted more Christlike than people with clean noses.
Look in his eyes in that pic – he’s definitely yearning to chug a beer, kick his Heavenly Father who art in Heaven in the stomach, and drop him with a stunner before bouncing back up to throw two aggressive middle fingers in his face.
But he still created an overall net positive on the world.