If you’ve ever dreamed of hitting the big time, but have no discernible talents that will get you noticed, never fear, there are ways around that.  Any or perhaps all of the following will get you far if you apply yourself.

1.  Be a Cat.

This is the most obvious way, a tried and true method of achieving fame.  It’s not even so much that people love cats, but that people love cats captured in various moments of shame.  There is something satisfying about witnessing such a self-important creature make a fool of himself.  The roots of this fascination date back to the early years of America’s Funniest Home Videos, where stupid cat videos won the grand prize a statistical total of 35% of the time*.

Back then, you had to lug around one of those gigantic shoulder-mounted behemoths hoping to catch kitty accidentally falling into the toilet or getting spooked by a baby.  It almost wasn’t worth the effort or the cost of physical therapy to transfer your video over to VHS, mail it to California, and hope that four years later you may get a glimpse of kitty being mocked by Bob Saget.

Today it is as easy as whipping out your phone at the exact moment of humiliation.  Better yet, supplementing that humiliation with cutely misspelled captions.

Unfortunately, if you are reading this you most likely are not a cat, so at best you only may personally know a cat who may or may not have achieved success.  Sadly, too, it is much more difficult for a dog to reach the heights of fame that a cat does.  Note the contrast between Maru, a cat who sacrifices his dignity simply by jumping into boxes and being fat, and Boo, the self-proclaimed world’s cutest dog.

vs.

This means that mathematically speaking, Maru is 24% more popular than Boo while being 47% as cute.  This doesn’t happen in nature, where packs of wild Pomeranians have been known to force fat jumping cats into extinction by the sheer power of their big heads and tiny sweaters.  As such, the Internet perverts the natural order of things.  Long story short, if you aren’t a cat, you can at least record your own cat doing something foolish and then capitalize on their shame.

2.  Be Cute.

We will just assume that you are not a cat for this one.  Cute in this context assumes human cuteness.  But there is a catch.  It is scientifically proven that no human can be cute beyond the age of 12.  If you are over 12, human and somewhat attractive in any way, the best approximation of cuteness you can possess is “moderately charming.”  True cuteness can only be achieved by a human in juvenile form.

Again, this poses a conundrum because if you are reading  this you most likely are not cute.  However, you may know someone who is, in which case you need to seize the opportunity to exploit their cuteness for your own personal gain.  The Internet is full of examples of this phenomenon.  (Note that Charlie and Harry are exponentially more powerful than Maru; however, they have the added benefit of having English accents, while Maru doesn’t even speak English, or anything for that matter.  But babies with accents are the undisputed rulers of internet viral videos.)

Now, because the competition is fierce in this category, because a full 64% of children are cute, you might not want to even put your horse in this race.  I happen to have cute children, but they have been unable to make the cut.  (If you watch the video you will see how clever my wordplay was there, although having to point it out somewhat negates any punch it may have had otherwise).

4.  Be a Douchebag

These days it seems that the douchier a person acts, the more attention they will get.  Douchebaggery can take many forms, from an unscripted meltdown to an all expense paid stay at the Crazytweet Hotel.  However, like being a cat, being a douchebag comes with a caveat – unless you are already well-known, as a previously established douchebag or as a normal person, nobody cares.  So you can probably cross this one off your list, because if you are reading this you are probably not famous, at least not famous enough to make your douchebaggery work for you.

5.  Be Talented.

Yeah, yeah, whatever.  Showoff.  Next!

6.  Be Awesome.

Perhaps the most worthy holders of the Internet Sensation idol are those that are just plain awesome.  This is difficult because there are plenty of people who are awesome, but only a very few come across in that very specific way which will pay the bills by utilizing that awesomeness to their advantage.  Again, no offense, but if you are reading this you are likely not awesome (in that way) because you would be off doing awesome things rather than reading a non-awesome blog that no awesome (in that way) person would read.  It is worth pointing out that the only two people likely to read here are my dad – hi Dad! – and myself, and while I do think my dad is awesome, he is awesome in a different way than would cause any sort of ripple in the fabric of the Internet.  Sorry, Dad.

7.  Be Funny.

This is another one, like douchiness and being a cat, that is either in you or it’s not.  If you are not funny you should surround yourself with people who are, write down all the funny things they say and bask in the glow of taking credit for being the one to write it down.  Not being funny myself, I do this all the time with the weird things my kids say.

So there you have it.  Wait, you are probably saying to yourself, “It says NINE ways, and that was only seven!”  The other two are either secret, or don’t exist, or I lost interest 7/9ths of the way through writing this.  It could be any of those reasons, or all of them, kind of like Schrodinger’s cat.  You’ll never know.

*Note: 78% of statistics are made up.