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Phrase: Fifteen minutes of fame
Many people attain their fifteen minutes of fame.
Some are famous for doing positive acts, such as rescuing a lost child, while others have become infamous.
Fifteen minutes of fame is used to refer to the brief moment of fame or infamy some normal people experience.
One Japanese man who became notorious for road rage is F. Miyasaki.
This guy achieved his fifteen minutes of fame by renting a white BMW SUV and using it to terrorize highway drivers.
His rampage of brake-checking and near-collisions culminated in his eventual arrest for the physical assault of a driver.
That’s an example of a Japanese man getting his fifteen minutes of fame for a negative reason that will remain on the internet forever.
Now we move on to Mr. Haruo Obata, who the media has named a ‘super volunteer’ by showing up at a location to help look for a young lost boy and almost immediately finding him when others could not.
Perhaps Mr. Obata is not the epitome of attaining fifteen minutes of fame because his fame continues.
While our previous example, Miyasaki, was running around causing trouble and otherwise being a menace to society, Mr. Haruo Obata showed himself as the ultimate example of a good citizen.
He has also volunteered to help at various natural disaster cleanups across Japan.
While those two men may be extreme examples, many regular people receive their fifteen minutes of fame.
We each have a brief opportunity to make our mark because, as Shakespeare’s Macbeth said:
Out, out, brief candle.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
What mark will you leave behind?
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 62.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.