Nothing screams fame louder than being a ‘Quiet celebrity’

Last month, my Instagram feed was just Jamnagar. As celebrities posted their outfits and their dance moves, and footage from the great Ambani pre-wedding racked up millions of views online, I decided to do my research (as any good pop culture writer should) and see what the woman of the hour herself, Radhika Merchant, was posting. I was in for a surprise (bigger than the one that Rihanna dancing to ‘teri baaton mein aisa uljha jiya’ gave me). Radhika Merchant has a private Instagram account, with an alpaca profile picture no less, a few hundred followers, and a ‘The Office’ reference as her bio.
The woman on everyone’s screen was just not posting anything publicly. She possibly never has. The unsaid subtext is pretty clear — she doesn’t need to.

ILLU CREDIT: CHAD CROWE

In an entirely separate incident, two weeks ago, a paparazzi video of Sara Ali Khan came up on my feed. It features Sara handing out what appear to be food packets to some poor people and berating paparazzi for shooting the scene, asking them to leave her alone. Clearly PR, I thought, as media literacy (and Reddit analysis) have reached a point where most of us know that paparazzi are usually called by celebrity teams themselves. So, this was likely her trying to be documented on camera as charitable, but that too, ‘effortlessly’ charitable. In fact, Sara seemed to be implying that she’d prefer it if the cameras weren’t there.

The incidents with Radhika and Sara are both evidence for a growing pet theory I’ve had about celebrity culture — that the pretense of ‘effortlessness’ on the internet is growing because effortless, undocumented popularity will always be seen as better than try-hard popularity. We just went through many years where relatable, accessible celebrities were favoured in the public eye, but now, rising levels of screen fatigue, shorter trend cycles, and visible harms of overexposure online are making people realise that the greatest sign of fame and power in an always-online world is to be as offline as possible.
We subconsciously consider undocumented, quiet greatness as better than that which is documented. Charity done quietly is noble. Charity, when posted online, is PR. This is why Taylor Swift never publicises her massive donations herself, and instead, we get the news through ‘leaks’ or ‘sources’ much later. This is why we continuously get fluffy pieces about the quiet humility of the Murthys. But ‘PR’ as a field exists because obvious self-promotion is icky. It is ‘try-hard’. Others promoting you, posting about you, organic news coverage about you etc. makes you cool. But trying to be famous, to be seen a certain way, is as uncool as you can be. The root here is our core notions about who and what being a celebrity means.

Consider the film ‘Animal’. The two female leads, Rashmika Mandanna and Tripti Dimri, have active Instagram pages with millions of followers, and both of them regularly post ads, promotional posts, glamorous shots, BTS from their shoots etc. In contrast, male lead Ranbir Kapoor doesn’t have an Instagram account at all. The biggest, most iconic celebrities in India, like Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, rarely post or clearly have teams handling their branded posting. They don’t need to.

This isn’t just a Bollywood thing. In the business world, many start-up founders are launching their own podcasts, posting LinkedIn gyaan, writing books, and trying to build a personal brand. Meanwhile, most of the Ambanis straight up don’t have Instagram accounts. I had to trawl through Anaita Shroff Adajania’s posts to find Isha Ambani’s private account (14 posts, 3360 followers, 2 following, if you wondered). And while most active Indian cricketers regularly post, make reels, and do random PR stunts, Dhoni lays low until it comes to hitting the big shots in the field. Thala for a reason.

Traditionally, ‘celebrity’ is a status you are accorded by society for your talent or who you are. Hence, it is supposed to be something you attain, an effortless state, though preceded by a lot of hard work. PR, constant self-promotion, stunts and posting makes an individual look insecure, like they actually haven’t achieved a level of celebrity yet. Like they’re still trying to make it.

This is the same reason why flashy outfits, like the nouveau riche wear (what Instagram calls West Delhi-core), have been recently replaced by muted, simple designer pieces. ‘Quiet luxury’ whispers wealth, because the truly, securely wealthy don’t have to jangle their coins to prove they have them. Similarly, I coined the term ‘quiet celebrity’ for this separate class of fame — when you simply have no need to try hard and put yourself out there. Work comes to you. Popularity comes to you. Effortlessly.

Reclusive celebrities have always been a thing — Aditya Chopra, for example, flies under the radar while simultaneously making the biggest hits — but the internet has reinvented things. Instead of being camera-shy or reclusive, you can still be charismatic and visible IRL (like Shah Rukh Khan) and just not do the performance of social media. This modicum of privacy has been described as a ‘luxury’ by international media, like vox.com and culture analyst Mina Le, saying that this distinction can be used to draw a line between ‘influencers’ and ‘celebrities’. Influencers like Emma Chamberlain, for instance, became ‘celebrities’ when they had enough businesses and red-carpet invites to pull back from daily vlogging. But in India, influencers aren’t yet powerful enough to be put on the same level as celebrities. This distinction of ‘quiet celebrity,’ then, is more a marker of where the real power, the real wealth lies — even as Bollywood and the business world seem to be laissez-faire democratic set-ups, there are actually very few who can afford to go offline.

Nepo kids can’t — they may have the money but they’re not relevant yet. B-listers can’t, because they need to stay in the public eye to continue being famous and getting work. Even all A-listers can’t. It is only the most elite who can actually go off the grid, without seeing any impact on their income, power, or relevance at all.

And that is the ultimate power move — because this person doesn’t need social media. They don’t need to post to have all eyes on them, or to have people think of them. Being an effortless ‘quiet celebrity’ is an echelon of fame in a culture that’s screen-fatigued and saturated with influencers. Their work, their brand, is just so good that it speaks for itself, and they’re so busy being iconic, why do they even need to be on the internet?

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