On a clear, fall morning in 2009, a Colorado father called 911 to report that his six-year-old son had stowed away on a home-made helium balloon which had become untethered and was floating through the sky. The authorities scrambled aircraft and followed the balloon until it landed approximately 2 hours and 60 miles later.
The boy was not found aboard the aircraft but was subsequently discovered hiding in the attic space of the family garage later that afternoon. It soon became apparent that the incident was staged by the father to further his pursuit of a “reality” cable program featuring himself and his family. The boy’s parents were charged with fabricating the hoax, and it did not help their defense that the 911 call was the second the father made that morning. The first call was to a local TV station.
This incident, seen live by millions of TV viewers, should have been a wake-up call. The Balloon Boy hoax was a milestone on the road to a culture of Hunger Artistry.
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“A Hunger Artist,” a short story by Franz Kafka published in 1922 and not translated into English until 1938, tells the story of a man who starves himself for public entertainment. His “art” is emaciation and suffering for public consumption. The story’s protagonist is bitter and resentful that his art is not appreciated as the public’s interests and tastes change. As interest wanes, he is relegated to a cage among the menagerie of animals in the side show of a traveling circus.
The story is less about how the public craves witnessing others’ suffering and more about the lengths to which some individuals will go to fulfill their need for attention.
The 20th century’s technical limitations constrained the market for Hunger Artists because the only mass media available were, for the most part, newspapers, magazines, radio, and film. This limited the attention seekers’ opportunities. The vast majority of individuals hungering for attention had to modify their desire to get along in the world.
This all changed in the second decade of the 21st century when the internet exploded with Facebook pages and YouTube channels. Billions of people could solicit the attention of billions of other people. It became a race to the bottom in the competition for likes and subscribers. The vulgarity of the Kardashians went viral and became democratized.
An interesting example occurred in May 2023 when an Australian woman named Taila Maddison made news for all the wrong reasons. Ms. Madison was a “content creator” on a subscription-based pornographic website called OnlyFans, where she performed sex acts and provided customized lurid content.
As Ms. Maddison cultivated a “loyal” following, she discovered that a particularly generous and devoted subscriber happened to be her stepfather. When her mother learned of this virtual relationship, she promptly kicked the stepfather to the curb. Interestingly, Ms. Maddison publicized the discovery, and news services all over the Anglosphere ran with the story.
This incident raises a number of moral questions, the most immediate being: why did Ms. Maddison publicize the discovery? If the relationship between her and her stepfather was illicit, why bring it to millions of people’s attention? The most reasonable answer is that disclosure would attract subscribers. The Hunger Artist is never sated.
There are OnlyFans content creators who have sex with dozens of men in a single session for their subscribers’ satisfaction and to drive traffic to their web pages. There exists an interesting parallel between Kafka’s character and these women. The protagonist of the Hunger Artists deprives himself of material sustenance to the point of physical annihilation, while the OnlyFans women immerse themselves in physical degradation to the point of spiritual negation. They sacrifice dignity and integrity for attention and money
Most scholars believe that A Hunger Artist represents Kafka’s interpretation of the artist’s sacrifice for art, a voluntary forfeit of existence for self-expression. As in most things, contemporary academia is wrong.
The story represents a pathological desire to be noticed, acknowledged, and appreciated, a deep desire that all humans are born with but move beyond as they mature. We all have experienced children who repeat the phrase “Look at me! Look at me!” Through adequate parenting and societal influence, the inborn desire for attention is quashed, and the young person is acculturated to become a contributing and virtuous member of society.
If, however, we reward the Hunger Artists with attention and money, we will get more Hunger Artists. Facebook, TikTok, OnlyFans, and other platforms monetize and encourage the worst characteristics of human nature. I suspect our cultural roots in virtue are not sufficiently deep to sustain a culture worthy of flourishing.
Chris Boland can be reached at Cboland7@outlook.com.