A person I will call H.R. is not rich, and not, in the typical sense of the word, "famous."
However, she's about to be infamous.
That's because H.R was being very rude on a train (by cursing loudly), and when asked by the conductor to stop, she became even ruder, berating the conductor and bragging of her superior education. If someone described her behavior to you, you might think it was one of those Etiquette Hell threads that you suspect are made up for drama.
But someone got her tirade on tape, and it
went viral and got posted on high-traffic sites, and internet folks figured out who she was and posted her name everywhere, and now H.R. (who has been desperately taking down her Facebook and LinkedIn and MySpace profiles, to late] is modern-infamous.
In another age, she would have been a soon-forgotten story by the few strangers who observed her.
In the age if cell phone cameras and Google, she is going to be known for, at least, YEARS (if not the rest of her life) for acting this way.
As lawyers say at the end of mean letters, "conduct yourself accordingly."
[One could have a very interesting moral and ethical discussion about whether it is right to film a stranger being very rude in public, and whether it is right to post that film on the internet, and whether it is right to figure out the person's name and post it. Whatever the moral and etiquette answers to those questions, the practical fact remains that if you are rude in public in a manner notable enough to be outrageous or amusing to strangers, you may find yourself famous.]
[Edit: Gawker link has rude words in its comments. The post does not seem to have H.R.'s name, which I chose not to post here.]
