I Want to Be Famous

“Who? Weekly is the only American institution I retain faith in. Lindsey and Bobby are not-so-secretly my generation’s smartest close-readers of the contemporary pop culture paradigm, in which noise, spectacle, absurdity, and meaninglessness are simultaneous givens, and in which capital and image and narrative have merged in ways that would’ve made our ancestors’ heads explode. Because they take it as a foundational principle that we’ve all lost our minds, they perform the great service of making you feel far less confused and deranged about your ambient surroundings. I Want to Be Famous takes you on a Regal Cinemas rollercoaster pre-show ride through the history of celebrity, then pulls gems of insight and humor from the garbage dump of our strange present. No one is as good as Lindsey and Bobby at being brilliant and absolutely pain-free.”—Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror

“I Want to Be Famous is the seminal text for the internet brain-rotted freaks, i.e. me, who are obsessed with pop music girlies and know what Spencer Pratt’s dog’s name is. It’s sharp, funny, educational: a dissertation-length highbrow tabloid written by your coolest friends who have excellent taste in lowbrow culture.”—Samantha Irby, author of Quietly Hostile

“As a Wholigan of almost a decade, there is no one I am more eager to hear contextualize the modern fame game than Lindsey and Bobby. They dive into the history of celebrity and its discontents with as much hunger as if it were a goblet of Tyra Banks’s hot ice cream, and the result is nothing short of a modern soliloquy on what it means to seek the gaze of the masses. They’re funny, this we know—but you will be surprised by how I Want to Be Famous stays with you, and by the questions it forces you to ask about the attention economy, and how we the audience are just as accountable for where culture finds itself, if not more so. Come for the laughs and incredible cultural deep cuts, stay for the exegesis on how we wound up . . . here.”—Lena Dunham, author of Famesick

“I Want to be Famous cements Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber as two of our most astute and thoughtful critics—and it’s a genuinely laugh-out-loud experience. Their grand theory of modern celebrity encompasses so much—stardom, yes, but also the death of the monoculture, the commercialization of everything, the end of shame, the bizarre contemporary media ecosystem. Finger and Weber have come up with a hilarious but also insightful framework that helps explain the world we live in now.”—Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

“I Want to Be Famous is a hilarious deep dive into the evolution of celebrity, from untouchable gods and goddesses to a morass of ‘just like us’ strivers (who manage to have more cultural currency than anyone with millions of dollars of studio backing behind them).”—Karina Longworth, author of Seduction and host of You Must Remember This