My Reaction to Famous People Was Apparently No Reaction

I have apparently never been very good at meeting famous people.

Not because I say the wrong thing.

That would require saying something.

My preferred method, at least according to a 2010 entry, was simpler:

freeze.

I had two pieces of evidence.

The first happened inside the NTV building.

I was wandering around when Burcu Esmersoy suddenly appeared in front of me.

The encounter was completely unplanned.

I had no prepared sentence.

No clever opening.

No normal opening either.

Apparently I simply looked at her.

And kept looking.

Long enough for her to say:

“If you’re finished, can I pass?”

That is a remarkably efficient way to discover that you have been staring at someone.

She had somewhere to go.

I had become temporary furniture.

I did not manage to start a conversation.

I did not ask a question.

I did not say hello.

The opportunity ended there.

The second example happened on another day at Chinawhite.

I saw Deniz Seki.

The old entry includes a younger man’s casual description of her appearance and what she was wearing.

I do not need to reproduce or amplify that evaluation now.

The part that matters is her reaction.

Unlike the first encounter, there was no verbal correction.

She simply passed by smiling.

And I once again did essentially nothing.

Two famous people.

Two opportunities to behave like a normal human being.

Result:

nothing.

So I summarized my celebrity-meeting style this way:

My reaction is apparently to have no reaction.

This remains one of the more accurate descriptions of social overload.

People like to imagine how they would behave if they unexpectedly met someone famous.

They would say something intelligent.

Something memorable.

Perhaps something that proves they are not like all the other fans.

They would be relaxed.

Respectful.

Funny.

Maybe the famous person would notice how unusually normal they were.

Then the actual person appears three meters away.

The brain shuts down.

This is one of the differences between imagination and proximity.

A celebrity on television is not socially demanding.

You can watch.

Judge.

Comment.

Change the channel.

You know things about them without their knowing anything about you.

The relationship is entirely one-directional.

Then suddenly the person becomes physical.

There is eye contact.

Distance.

Movement.

The possibility of speech.

And the brain has to reorganize the category.

This is not an image anymore.

This is a person walking toward me.

That transition can be surprisingly difficult.

The first scene is especially funny because of how little information was required for the misunderstanding.

I must have been standing or moving in a way that blocked her path.

I looked.

She waited.

I apparently continued looking.

Finally:

Are you done?

Can I pass?

There is no glamorous celebrity encounter hidden inside that sequence.

It is almost anti-glamour.

The famous person is simply trying to walk somewhere.

The non-famous person has malfunctioned in the corridor.

That is much closer to real life.

Celebrity culture creates an artificial distance.

People become faces viewed through screens.

Their images are edited.

Repeated.

Photographed.

Discussed.

Their names become larger than ordinary social scale.

Then you encounter the actual body that carries the name.

They still need space to pass in a hallway.

That alone can collapse some of the abstraction.

A television personality has become:

the person waiting for you to move.

This is healthy.

If slightly embarrassing.

The NTV setting probably intensified the effect.

The source only says I was wandering around the building.

It does not explain why I was there, where exactly inside the building I was, whether anyone was with me, or what happened immediately afterward.

Those details should remain unknown.

The scene does not need them.

NTV building.

Burcu Esmersoy appears.

I stare.

She asks whether she can pass.

End.

That is enough structure for a memory.

In fact, adding more would weaken it.

Embarrassment works through compression.

You rarely need a full chapter.

One sentence can preserve fifteen years of humiliation.

There is a useful lesson in that for writing.

A weak version would say:

Once I saw Burcu Esmersoy and got nervous.

That tells the reader what happened emotionally.

The actual dialogue shows it.

“If you’re finished, can I pass?”

No explanation required.

We know exactly how successfully I handled the situation.

Dialogue is cruelly efficient.

The second encounter works differently.

No dialogue.

Just recognition and a smile.

That makes it gentler.

Deniz Seki passes.

I still do not produce anything resembling interaction.

But nothing forces the awkwardness into language.

Sometimes the other person rescues you simply by continuing to walk.

That may be the ideal celebrity encounter for someone whose conversational system has temporarily stopped.

Smile.

Pass.

Everybody keeps their dignity.

At least enough dignity.

What interests me now is not really the celebrities themselves.

It is the strange hierarchy our minds construct before an interaction begins.

We speak normally to countless strangers.

Cashiers.

Security guards.

Taxi drivers.

Waiters.

Coworkers we barely know.

Someone asking for directions.

Nobody prepares.

You simply talk.

But attach public recognition to the stranger and suddenly ordinary language becomes difficult.

What changes?

Not the mechanics of conversation.

“Hello” still works.

The famous person has not become a different biological species.

The difficulty is inside the observer.

The mind begins imagining the interaction from outside.

What should I say?

Will this sound stupid?

They must hear this constantly.

Should I pretend I do not recognize them?

Would that be more sophisticated?

Should I say I like their work?

Which work?

What if I confuse something?

While all these questions are being processed, the person has already walked past.

This is how self-consciousness destroys timing.

Normal conversation depends on not examining every word before using it.

Celebrity encounters can make every possible sentence feel as though it is being submitted for approval.

The result is often silence.

Or something much worse than silence.

In my case, silence was probably the safer option.

Except for the staring.

That part could have been improved.

There is also a broader phenomenon here: recognition without relationship.

Human social instincts evolved around people we actually knew.

If a face was familiar, there was probably a reason.

Family.

Village.

Work.

Neighborhood.

Repeated contact.

Modern media broke that connection.

You can recognize someone instantly who has never seen you before.

Your brain says:

Known person.

Reality says:

Complete stranger.

That mismatch is strange if you think about it.

You know the face.

Perhaps the voice.

Perhaps details about the person’s career.

You may have seen them hundreds of times.

But socially, you have zero shared history.

The asymmetry creates awkwardness.

You feel familiarity that you are not entitled to use as familiarity.

The celebrity, meanwhile, sees just another unknown face.

This can make fans behave oddly.

Some become overfamiliar.

Some become too excited.

Some demand photographs.

Some tell long personal stories.

Some become aggressive when the famous person does not perform friendliness on command.

And some apparently stand in the way and stare until asked to move.

Every personality finds its own failure mode.

Mine was passive.

There is something to be said for passive failure.

At least I did not create a long story for the other person.

Burcu Esmersoy may have forgotten the encounter before reaching the next room.

That is comforting.

Our most embarrassing moments usually have wildly unequal memory value.

For us:

I remember this sixteen years later.

For the other person:

What?

No idea.

This is one of the great mercies of embarrassment.

We imagine other people storing our mistakes with the same care we do.

They usually have their own lives.

The person who said something awkward to you in 2014 may still wake up thinking about it.

You probably do not remember their name.

This asymmetry should make social life easier.

It rarely does in the moment.

But it helps afterward.

The old entry was written in a playful tone.

I was not traumatized.

I had turned the encounters into a personal rule.

What do I do when I see famous people?

Nothing.

That is a good comedic structure because it converts failure into consistency.

One incident is awkward.

Two incidents become a pattern.

A third would almost become a methodology.

You can survive many personal weaknesses by giving them a name.

Suddenly they look less like failures and more like character traits.

I do not freeze.

I give the “no reaction” reaction.

Much more professional.

Humor often works this way.

It gives agency back after an awkward moment.

At the time, you fail to control the situation.

Later, you control the story.

The event happened to you.

The joke belongs to you.

This is one reason embarrassing memories make good material.

They improve with age.

The embarrassment decreases.

The structure remains.

And the younger version of yourself becomes a character you can observe with some affection.

Look at him.

Standing there.

Apparently forgetting that corridors are also used for walking.

I should not be too harsh.

Unexpected recognition can genuinely interrupt attention.

The visual system identifies the face before the social system has decided what to do with that information.

There is a fraction of a second in which the world feels misfiled.

This person belongs on television.

Why are they here?

Of course that thought is irrational.

People on television also exist in buildings.

They eat.

Drive.

Wait.

Shop.

Walk down corridors.

But repeated mediated exposure gives them a location in the mind.

Screen.

Stage.

Photograph.

Seeing them outside that frame can produce the same tiny shock as seeing a teacher outside school when you are a child.

Teachers were not supposed to be in supermarkets.

They belonged in classrooms.

Then one appears pushing a cart.

The universe has made an administrative error.

Celebrity sightings are the adult version.

The face belongs somewhere else.

Then reality insists that categories are not geography.

The Deniz Seki encounter seems to have been easier perhaps because I already knew what was happening.

Or perhaps because the social arrangement required nothing from me.

Again, the source does not explain, so I should not invent psychology as fact.

I only know:

I saw her.

She passed by smiling.

I remained essentially nonreactive.

The repetition is enough.

The two scenes also show why famous people probably become skilled at reading strangers quickly.

Someone recognizes them.

The signs are visible.

Double take.

Stare.

Smile.

Whisper.

Phone movement.

Approach.

Freeze.

They must process these reactions constantly.

What feels unique to the person seeing the celebrity may be routine to the celebrity.

That is another asymmetry.

For me:

Burcu Esmersoy is suddenly here.

For her:

Another person is staring.

The experience is extraordinary only on one side.

This is why the most respectful approach is probably the simplest.

Remember the asymmetry.

You know who they are.

They do not know you.

If you speak, keep that reality intact.

A greeting does not require pretending to be old friends.

Admiration does not create obligation.

Recognition does not create ownership.

These principles seem obvious when written calmly.

They are harder when surprise arrives first.

My solution was accidental but not disastrous.

I did not demand attention.

I did not follow anyone.

I did not interrupt with a speech.

I just failed to move efficiently.

There are worse sins.

The entry also belongs to an older celebrity-media environment.

In 2010, smartphones existed, but the reflex to immediately turn every unexpected encounter into content was not yet as universal as it would become.

The source contains no photograph request.

No selfie.

No video.

No social-media post from the scene.

Just seeing.

That feels almost quaint now.

Today, a famous-person encounter often contains a second decision immediately:

Should I take out my phone?

The phone can turn a human interaction into evidence collection.

Proof I was there.

Proof I met them.

Proof for people who were not present.

That changes attention.

You stop experiencing the moment and begin producing the artifact.

My old failures at least remained entirely human.

I saw someone.

I forgot how to function.

No battery required.

There is a freedom in memories without photographs.

They cannot be checked perfectly.

You carry the scene as language.

NTV building.

A sudden face.

A stare.

“If you’re finished, can I pass?”

The memory becomes sharper around the line because the line has to carry the scene.

A photograph might show clothing, corridor, lighting, distance.

But it would not necessarily capture the timing.

The sentence does.

This is why archives of text can preserve social moments better than images sometimes do.

A photograph says:

We were both here.

A sentence can say:

Here is exactly how badly I handled being here.

That is richer.

There is another small issue in the old entry worth reconsidering.

The younger voice evaluated Deniz Seki partly through appearance.

That was normal for the tone I used then, but I do not need to repeat the framing uncritically now.

The memory does not depend on whether she was at her “most beautiful,” or on the clothes she wore.

The actual contrast is behavioral.

First encounter:

my stare became noticeable enough to receive a comment.

Second:

the person simply smiled and moved on.

The older version of the story can preserve the younger gaze without making it the point.

That is how old writing should sometimes be revisited.

Not censored.

Not pretended away.

Contextualized.

The archive records who I was.

The new essay records what I now notice about who I was.

Both should coexist.

Otherwise memoir becomes propaganda for the current self.

We clean up every old rough edge until the younger person sounds suspiciously modern.

That is dishonest.

People change vocabulary.

Judgment.

Sensitivity.

Humor.

Those changes are part of the story too.

What remains consistent here is the inability to respond quickly.

That survived moral editing because it was never ideological.

It was simply awkward.

Awkwardness ages very well.

It requires almost no historical explanation.

Anyone can understand:

Famous person appears.

Brain leaves.

The exact celebrity names could be replaced and the mechanism would remain.

That universality is part of the fun.

Almost everyone has some version.

Meeting a professor whose work they admire.

A musician.

An actor.

An athlete.

A writer.

Someone senior in their profession.

A person they had only known through media.

Suddenly the imagined conversation meets the real nervous system.

The nervous system wins.

Years later, you think of all the obvious things you could have said.

Hello.

I enjoy your work.

Nice to meet you.

Three seconds.

Enough.

The mind develops perfect conversational skill only after the opportunity has ended.

This is one of its most irritating features.

Retrospective fluency.

In the moment:

nothing.

Two hours later:

an entire screenplay.

That is why I have sympathy for the 2010 version of myself.

He did not fail because he lacked words generally.

The archive proves the opposite.

There are far too many words.

He failed because timing matters.

The right sentence five minutes later is no sentence at all.

Social competence is partly real-time computing.

You do not get to submit the answer tomorrow.

Perhaps that is what makes spontaneous encounters valuable.

They reveal how we behave without preparation.

Not how intelligent we are.

Not even necessarily how confident.

Just what the system does under sudden load.

Mine apparently entered safe mode.

Output disabled.

Observe only.

That was the pattern.

And yet I am glad I wrote it down.

Not because seeing two famous people was historically important.

It was not.

Because the entry preserves a recognizable personal defect in two compact scenes.

Personal archives need these.

Not every post should explain a philosophy.

Some should simply say:

This is what I apparently do.

The writer who turns every memory into a lesson eventually becomes exhausting.

Sometimes the lesson is:

Move out of the corridor.

That is enough.

If I met either person today, perhaps I would react differently.

Perhaps not.

The archive cannot answer that.

What it can say is that on 14 July 2010, I had enough evidence to declare a pattern.

When confronted unexpectedly with a famous person, my chosen response was no response.

One of them had to ask me to let her pass.

The other escaped with only a smile.

Not a great celebrity strategy.

Excellent material, though.