Life & Wisdom Quote by Poppy Z. Brite

There is a deliberate cruelty baked into the syntax: “created to be abused” doesn’t describe fame as something that happens to a person, but as a manufacturing process with an intended end use. Brite’s line isn’t just a complaint about criticism; it’s an indictment of the celebrity ecosystem as an assembly line that turns human beings into consumable targets. The phrase “even insignificant ones like me” adds a sharp twist of self-deprecation that doubles as accusation. If even the “insignificant” are fair game, then abuse isn’t an exception reserved for the ultra-famous; it’s the default mode of the crowd.

The most loaded choice is “the Great Unwashed,” an old, snobbish label for the masses. Brite deploys it with barbed ambivalence: it reads as both disdain and defense mechanism. The subtext is ugly but honest: celebrity culture weaponizes class resentments in both directions. The audience feels entitled to punish the famous for their visibility, while the visible person is tempted to answer that entitlement with contempt. That tension is the engine of the quote’s bite.

Contextually, it lands in a pre-social-media era that already understood the dynamic social media later industrialized: attention as a currency, humiliation as a spectator sport. Coming from an author associated with transgressive, outsider aesthetics, it also hints at how “fame” can cling to people who never asked to be mascots, moral lessons, or punching bags. The line works because it refuses the comforting story that abuse is an accident; it frames it as a feature.