Fame occurs when a person has more inbound attention then they are able to respond to. It's when a person can no longer answer every single email they get, just because there aren't enough hours in their day. Or when a person goes out in public and there are strangers asking for interactions with you with a lack of an interpersonal relationship.

We all have a tendency to seek out the attention and validation of famous people, who are, by definition, the people who are least likely to be able to give it to us. Perhaps that's why we seek it out and want it so badly...it's scarce.

If you read a book lately that wasn't a New York Times bestseller, and you liked it, consider sending the author an email and telling them. Post a comment on a few blogs that resonated with you. I do this at random, and it's not about reciprocity. It would be easy for me to stick the URL for this blog into the "Your Website" field on the comment form, but I'm not interested in doing that.

Think of it as a gift. The social equivalent of buying a homeless person a bagel.