How did the famous people in OGS become famous?

Famous people in OGS, (e.g.sofiam) please tell us how you get famous!

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everyone is welcome!

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Be present, be unique! :grin:

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Hi Yui_Chit. you mentioned me, so I think I have to share some ideas :slight_smile:

I would like to premise that although I cannot deny that many people know me or my nickname I am not special. I have many problems and often I have no problem admitting them. I don’t want to be an example to anyone. There are so many better examples to follow.
If I were you, I would ask what you mean by “famous” or why you are interested in being famous. I don’t know if doing what I did or anything that might not be good for you (in particular for your mental health) is a good compromise, in my opinion no.

If to you being famous means that players know who I am, well, I’ve played a lot of games (and I mean a really exaggerated number) for years. This has led me to interact with and get to know so many players.

If for you being famous means holding “important” roles, like being moderator of OGS or vice president of the Italian go federation, I think it happened because I gave people reason to believe that they could trust me and that I wanted to engage. But I didn’t do it with the idea of manipulating anybody I think and I hope I didn’t let anybody down.

But please don’t try to be like me and make the goal of being famous your main goal. You are important and you have to do what makes you feel good. The approval of others is important, but only up to a point. Don’t destroy yourself for something superficial. It’s not worth it.

I could articulate more, but I’ll stop here for now :slight_smile:

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As you get older, I expect (and hope) that you will increasingly crave obscurity. It has many advantages. About 50 years ago, I wrote an essay on fame in which I noted that no matter what you do (short of walking on the moon, perhaps), billions of humans will never know your name. I recommend cultivating the mindset expressed by one of my favorite epigrams (from Epictetus): “Each of us is audience enough for the other.”

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No one in OGS is really famous. OGS players who walk in the street are almost never recognized by passers-by.

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Sorry if I sounded too presumptuous in my previous post. It’s just that the OP used me as an example :sweat_smile:

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Your response was fine. My reply was to the OP. One of the unfortunate ambiguities of the Forums is that responses to the OP are not shown as such.

I, on the other hand, was replying to @jlt :rofl:

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But I wasn’t replying to you either :grinning:

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What? No hysterical fans?

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Not in the street, but I have had people I don’t know come up to me at go tournaments and ask “Are you Uberdude?”.

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A number of times people I don’t know have come up to me at tournaments and asked “Are you Anton?”

…because they were looking for their next round opponent :wink:

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Every idea deserves some caution.
Timon the Athenean was said to have a better one on his grave:
“Here I lie at the end of this wretched life. You shall not know my name and you can go to the crows(hell).”

He was a lovely person. :innocent:
Plutarch writes about him that he appeared in the Athenean citizen’s gathering only once, to inform everyone that he was planning to cut down a tree in one of his fields, that a lot of people had used in the past to commit suicide and urged them to hurry up if they wanted to still find the tree there.

Isn’t it funny how his extreme wish to be left alone and be obscure, actually led to him being still famous hundreds and even thousands of years later? Life has some very odd punishments sometimes. :melting_face:

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I too have had several people I didn’t know approach me and ask “are you stupid?”.
And I was like yeah! That’s me, how did you know? :smiley:

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Sometimes propinquity beats recognition. When our piano trio formed in college, the pianist and I (we knew each other) were chatting in the music building. “How are we going to find [violinist’s name]?” one of us asked. A passing woman turned to us, startled: “That’s me!”

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It seems a few factors are at play

what may help:
be in every thread
be funny
be in every major live game chat
play everyday
play a lot of correspondce games
have a distinct bio - OGS Profile Formatting: Some Useful Tips
have some presence outside ogs
make go content
play go in person, meet go players
be in europe (easy travel for go)
be an organizer

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“I don’t know how to tell you this, but…”

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And “a lot” == about 1000 at any given time :joy:

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If you just want to be famous inside the (tiny) go community, then you have a few extra options:

  • Reach high dan level (like 9d on OGS or at least 6d EGF)
  • have a :dolphin: in your OGS nickname.
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