In the past, fame requires paparazzi and those with the connection with the media for publication.
In the modern days of the internet, what it takes, is a social media account, and the will to do something no one else wants to do.
To many people on the internet, Ava Louise met her internet fame for all the wrong reasons.
Amid the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic, the college student licked a toilet seat as part of an ill-conceived viral social media challenge.
It all began one year earlier in 2019, when Ava Louise appeared on Dr. Phil, an American talk show hosted by Phil McGraw.
At the time, she said to Dr. Phil that she'd rather "die hot than live ugly."
During her appearance on the show, she shared about her Instagram addiction, to then admitting that her main goal in life is "to become Insta-famous."
She also said that she rather be friends with people who can actually give her access to backstage at VIP events, or hook her up with perks.
"Your philosophy of friends is how you can use them to get where you wanna be?" Dr. Phil asked Louise.
"Yes," she replied.
Then it was on March 14th, 2020, when Louise started a new 'Coronavirus Challenge' on TikTok.
In the video she uploaded to the platform, she was seen licking the toilet seat on an airplane.
"Please RT this so people can know how to properly be sanitary on the airplane," she said on Twitter, after posting the TikTok video.
After Louise’s video blew up, another influencer named Larz posted his own version of the "challenge" and later claimed he contracted COVID-19 from the stunt. That was a lie.
Not only that Larz is one of Louise’s friends, but it was Louise who asked Larz to pretend to be sick to help make the challenge go viral.
According to Louise, the whole thing was essentially just a social media stunt to make people to listen to her song "Skinny Legend Anthem."
It was also a way for her to get more followers.
"I did the whole toilet-licking stunt, one, because fuck boomers and I don’t take this virus seriously," said Louise. "Two, as strategic marketing, so people would be like ‘Who the hell is Ava Louise?’ and connect me to that song."
And indeed, Louise’s song blew up on TikTok.
Her song was used in videos by top TikTok creators, including Charli D’Amelio, who is the most-followed user on the platform. With many top influencers sharing the song to their millions of followers, Louise's song became part of the most popular trending songs on TikTok at the time.
This catapulted Louise to influencer status.
Around this time, Louise circulated a rumor about Kanye West dating Jeffree Star, a famous American YouTuber, entrepreneur, and makeup artist.
She took it to Twitter to claim that she has insider information about a romantic relationship between the two, without backing it up with clear evidence.
"My source is legit I [promise]," she said in her caption.
But still, Louise newfound status as an influencer quickly made her words newsworthy.
Soon, both Kanye West and Jeffree Star became trending on Twitter.
But because Louise couldn't provide any concrete evidence, the news faded rather quickly.
Unsurprisingly, nothing Louise admitted that she lied.
"I made the entire scandal up. There is literally not one bit of truth to anything I have said," she said. "I just tricked the entire world into talking about me again because I was on a lot of Adderall."
As for Louise’s 'Coronavirus Challenge', the stunt that propelled her name in the first place, that also worked.
She said that she received thousands of positive comments from other Generation Z-ers who think her Coronavirus Challenge stunt was funny and agree with her take on "boomers."
While the challenge did gained popularity, it also received numerous backlash, especially from Generation X-ers and those older.
Not only that what she did was dangerous and disgusting, but also because the COVID-19 becoming a pandemic is making people worried.
"I just don’t think that this is as concerning as possibly as it could be, because I don’t have coronavirus. I don’t have any symptoms. No one I know has symptoms," she tried to explain in her defense.
In a separate news, she also said that she had posted the TikTok video so she could be famous, and featured on major news outlets, adding that she had sanitized the toilet seat prior to licking it.
She also claimed to have made $4,000 over her viral stunt.
In a more recent interview with Dr. Phil, she was asked, "If you infect one person that loses their life, is it worth it for you to have this attention?"
"Yeah," she replied.
"I was, like, really annoyed that corona was getting more publicity than me," she said in the interview.