Eric Siu argues that platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have shortened the half-life of fame, creating rapid rises and falls for public figures. Oprah's dominance was possible because a few channels could monopolize attention. That era is gone.
there will never be another Oprah because the half-life fame is gonna come down so much. Meaning that because of TikTok, because of Instagram, because of YouTube, there's the quick rise of people, but then there's always gonna be someone else that rises up. It's a quick up and down, up and down, up and down. And so like Oprah, a lot of these people back in the day, it was just a couple of channels, right? And then you have cable that came out, but like they monopolized the attention and that's how you became someone like an Oprah.
