“This series,” Lance Loud later said, “was the fulfillment of the middle-class dream that you can become famous for being just who you are.” It wasn’t Gilbert’s intent, but the unexpected effect was to make the Louds famous for a brief time. Pat Loud would publish her autobiography, and the five children would perform as a rock band on The Dick Cavett Show, à la the Partridge Family. Bill Loud would pose in his bathrobe for Esquire, and Lance in his birthday suit for Screw magazine. And yet by the 1980s, the Louds’ name would scarcely ring a bell; the exception was Lance, who would achieve immortality as a gay icon.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 842