At around the time this article was written some friends of mine managed to get a musician that was primarily active in the 50s and 60s on the phone once and a

At around the time this article was written some friends of mine managed to get a musician that was primarily active in the 50s and 60s on the phone once and a lovely conversation was had. (I'm omitting the name because he's still alive and I don't want to create a thundering herd). There is some portion of famous people, particularly ones that have passed a bit into obscurity where a bit of fan contact would probably be welcome. Unfortunately it's hard to tell who and "a bit" would almost always be far less than the amount received if it got out that they didn't mind fan contact. I've sent an occasional no-response-expected messages of thanks to the creators of stuff that I've liked-- as I've always appreciated receiving those myself. I thought Eno's message in "exhibit 1" was thoughtful, well written, and worth the read. I one read an insightful comment on reddit about the perspective of a youtuber about letting fans down at conventions because they didn't live their "on" youtube personality 24/7. It discussed how easy is is to disappoint people by just being human and what a tremendous responsibility having fans can be. From that perspective it isn't hard to see how just minimizing contact might be best for everyone. [Alas, I can't find it now to link to it here, as google has become substantially useless for searching for specific reddit comments]