The weight of fame on the human psyche is a burden that is not only crippling, but highly addictive. Like all drugs, fame provides momentary satisfaction or even bliss, but even this wears thin over the years, and its ultimate effects are almost always detrimental.
Nevertheless, those who have been pushed into the limelight, even if they really know that their lives are being destroyed by it, will often do anything they can to remain there. This is perhaps particularly true of those who are falling out of the public view. Attempting to resuscitate their fame will often mean generating sensationalist news, doubling down on outdated views, or, alternatively, switching one’s focus to an altogether different subject. This final option is most often the one chosen by those making a final, desperate attempt to regain in a different form the stardom they so sorely miss.
A case in point is Greta Thunberg. The 22-year-old activist became world famous (or perhaps infamous) at the age of 16 when she addressed the United Nations, exclaiming to the politicians: “You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words”. These precocious remarks quickly gave her global recognition, and she went on to receive the prestigious “Time Person of the Year” award in 2019.
Nevertheless, like most who acquire fame – or notoriety – young, Thunberg was fated to fall out of the public eye, and soon enough she was more or less forgotten. This, it would seem, did not sit well with Thunberg.
After a more or less five-year hiatus of public attention, Thunberg finally came back into the news when she set off on a voyage to Gaza amidst the ongoing war between Israel Palestine. The so-called “selfie yacht” carried Thunberg along with eleven other activists, one of whom had been photographed with the late leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, and another of whom had attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Thunberg was widely mocked for what seemed to be nothing more than a publicity stunt – hence the boat’s moniker. Moreover, according to Israeli sources, the boat contained less than one truckload of humanitarian aid. Israeli spokesman David Mencer claimed that Greta’s journey “wasn’t humanitarian aid. It’s Instagram activism… Greta was not bringing aid, she was bringing herself”.
Thunberg has always been a strong personality, and has always been an attention-seeker. Greta’s father reportedly went through the “ultimate nightmare for a parent” when his daughter stopped communicating, stopped attending school, and even stopped eating, calling her parents “huge hypocrites” and forcing her singer mother to cancel contracts in order to be with her. In Mr. Thunberg’s own words, when speaking about his support of Greta’s activism, “I did all these things… but I didn’t do it to save the climate, I did it to save my child”.
It would not be fair to call Greta’s actions cruel, particularly as she was a child with a form of autism; nevertheless, a seemingly desperate need for attention is never a good thing in a young person, and it is a grievous mistake to feed it. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the world did.
Thunberg’s hunger for publicity was both sated and increased by the media attention from supporters and opponents alike. When it took a steep drop after 2019, Thunberg fell out of the limelight for a while. Nevertheless, she managed to resurface, now an adult, pioneering a cause superficially not in the least way related to her normal activism around climate change.
One cannot help but suspect that this was merely to satisfy her craving for a spotlight. There was nothing more she could realistically say about her climate change agenda, so instead she oriented herself to the current popular issue in the liberal world. When Israeli forces finally stopped the boat, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition posted a pre-recorded video from Thunberg, in which she claimed that she had been “intercepted and kidnapped” by Israel. Some even suggest that, upon her arrival in an airport in France after her deportation from Israel, she attempted to make her hands look like they had been cuffed – which they had not.
The problem with people like Thunberg is that they will never be pleased. As soon as they are given media attention, they will search for it insatiably. Her altogether unremarkable voyage is a perfect example of this. Thunberg’s “help” would have made no difference to the situation in Gaza, and her supposedly humanitarian motivations seemed very much to take second place to her own personal satisfaction. One can think what one wants about the war in Gaza, but one cannot deny that feeding the egos of people like Greta Thunberg will make no positive difference to the conflict. Thunberg’s so-called “kidnapping” pales in comparison to the experiences of those people who actually suffer from seizure by hostile forces. If the Greta Thunbergs of the world are to be corrected, then the media simply must stop talking about them. It does not matter whether the news on them is positive or negative – any attention will convince them that they are important and deserve to be heard by even more people. Yes, it is ironic that this is being written in a piece giving attention to Thunberg, but it has to be said.
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Patrick Vincent is a Dublin-based writer.