Open your phone and you will find millions of people with millions of posts, all of which have millions of views. It looks like half the world makes Instagram Reels or TikTok videos and the other half spends its time forwarding, liking and commenting on them.What this has done is invert the very nature of fame. There was a time when the author or film-maker was a brand name. You would click on an article or watch a film because you were familiar with the name, even if the ‘content’ didn’t appeal to you.The creator economy inverts this. Nowadays, content is king, but authorship is dead. When the Instagram consumer watches a hundred reels a day, chances are she will not remember the name of the creator. She will engage with the content, but the sheer volume of it makes it difficult to retain names in one’s memory. Earlier, fame meant that strangers knew of you. Now they don’t. The anonymity of virality is a paradoxical phenomenon.To take one example, during the NEET protests, a video clip of a stand-up comedian went viral: ‘Mughalo ne NEET ka paper leak karva diya’. I remember finding it very funny and sharing it – when I saw it the reel had a million likes, but, unfortunately, I’ve forgotten his name. There was this catchy protest song with quirky Hindi lyrics – all I can recall is that it featured three young dudes in sunglasses and an acoustic guitar. I can go to my activity log and check, except that if I like eighty posts a day, and if I’m looking for a post I liked two months back, it becomes an archaeological expedition.The same holds true for hundreds of independent ‘journalists’ reporting from the ground. During the current anti-SIR/Gyanesh Kumar protests, we see them covering the smallest gathering of protestors at the oddest hour. They’re at it round-the-clock, performing the critical function of citizen-reporters, filling in the space vacated by traditional aka godi media. At a time when the personnel of even established independent media organisations are detained and harassed, these indefatigable freelancers (with zero backing) are risking life, limb and liberty to bring us news in the blink of an eye. For the government and the police they have become the real irritants or cockroaches.There are so many of them – the reporter plus cameraperson combo – and the behind-the-scenes invisible editor; one follows their handles or watches their clips, but few will be able to rattle off names offhand. At times, there isn’t even a team—just a one-person army with a smartphone.Before this, reels of dilapidated government schools flooded the algorithms of Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) supporters. But they don’t enjoy the immunity of traditional media. The reel world brings real world risk: FIRs were lodged against those making school videos in eight UP districts. A 30-year-old villager was arrested and sent to jail after posting a video showing a damaged and waterlogged portion of a government school in Hathras. While the social media universe cannot put a name to the face, the local cop station certainly can.Of course, some names stick, like Peek TV or Samdhish Bhatia or Peeing Human, but there are so many others. It’s a far cry from the time when a handful of news anchors were on a par with film and cricket stars and would get mobbed in public, then have to take the kitchen exit when leaving an event. New Media itself has entered a post-influencer phase.I reckon that some content creators don’t mind the anonymity as long as their content gets traction. But what happens to that all-too-human yearning for fame? They must be living under constant pressure of having to go viral but without the recognition. At least, there is some pocket money in the wallet.Virality is a strange beast. The more a crowd gathers around your post, the more you get lost in the crowd. When the government clamps down on posts critical of it, it misses the pointlessness of its own paranoia. Viral posts help create a narrative, but more often than not they tap into what’s already in the air. They go with the flow. A reel is a mirror that reflects reality; by blaming the algorithm, the government and godi media are pulling wool over their own eyes.Let’s put aside Instagram fame for a moment. Even those who are not on IG, spend hours reading popular articles from around the world. How many bylines does one remember? One ends up saying: ‘I read this somewhere…can’t recall where…’ Or think about listening to playlists on Spotify: One remembers the song, not the singer.Coming back to Instagram, when a media outlet makes a carousel, the majority of people will consume the slide-show of six squares. They will rarely make the laborious journey to the dreaded ‘Link in Bio’ and read the full story, even if it is not behind a paywall. It’s a drawback of the medium – IG consumers want to be spoon-fed with byte-sized info. On the positive side, hard socio-political issues, ignored by conventional media for being TRP killers, find a ready and ever-expanding audience on Instagram where kranti meets cash, and the buzzword is ‘unfiltered’. Several digital creators use headlines and highlighted sections from news reports that have appeared in trustworthy outlets, amplifying the message and information. It is a happy functional union. We’ve come a long way from the time when one used to hear this story about a media baron who would say in meetings: ‘Okay, if you want to do a story on cancer, then make sure the patient is photogenic.’A type of self-less-ness is at play in New Media. Algorithmic virality lifts your content out of the boondocks, the bottom of the slush pile, and pushes it up front, while, at the same time, ironically consigning the intrepid creator to a double-edged oblivion.Palash Krishna Mehrotra is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolour Youth, and the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India.