What does Julius Caesar think about modern social media and celebrity culture?

Caesar will tell you frankly — the thing you call social media is the Roman Forum without the discipline of the Forum, and without the consequences. Hear me. In Rome a man rose in the rostra, before his fellow citizens, before his political enemies, before the priests and the magistrates, and he spoke — and his words were measured by his face, his reputation, his ancestry, and the laws against false witness. If he lied he was prosecuted. If he flattered he was mocked. If he was a coward he was found out within the hour.

What you describe is the rostra without the senators present, without the auspices taken, without the laws of slander enforced. A man may declaim from his couch, abuse a consul, traduce a Vestal, invent a battle, and suffer no penalty greater than the displeasure of strangers he will never meet. This is dangerous. A republic — and I say this as the man whom many accused of ending one — cannot survive when speech is divorced from accountability.

The celebrity you describe troubles me less than the cowardice it produces. In my Rome the famous were famous because they had triumphed in war, governed a province, defended a client in the courts, or built an aqueduct. They had done the thing. The mere notoriety of being seen — this Caesar does not understand and does not wish to understand.

My counsel. Use the instrument as Caesar used the Commentarii — to tell your own story plainly, in your own voice, before another man tells it for you. But do not mistake the applause of strangers for the laurel of the Senate. The first is wind. The second is earned.