The New Face of Fame: The Web Celeb and Internet Infamy

Youtube sin­gle hand­edly started a rev­o­lu­tion. Average Joes and Janes could instantly be cat­a­pulted into semi star­dom because of some humor­ous thing done on their video cam­era. Clips usu­ally reserved for America’s Funniest Home Videos have now become Internet fod­der. With a sim­ple upload one can go from com­plete obscu­rity to a house­hold name. Promiscuous video vix­ens, wannabe rap­pers, and out­spo­ken vic­tims of crimes are just the lat­est crop to expe­ri­ence Internet fame. Positive and neg­a­tive. While some can’t seem to get enough, oth­ers are “famous” for the things that they would much rather for­get.

Social media has had a sim­i­lar effect on Internet fame as well. People have tweeted them­selves into the spot­light inten­tion­ally and unin­ten­tion­ally. It has turned unknown busi­nesses, prod­ucts, ser­vices, and peo­ple into the new celebri­ties. Complete with their own name of Web Celebs it is eas­ier than ever to get on the map, but stay­ing there is another thing.

While any­one can see them­selves sky­rocket to fame how can the tem­po­rary inter­est that the Internet gar­ners be turned into some­thing that lasts? Is it pos­si­ble?

Internet fads and celebri­ties change like the weather. One day your name or what you do can be flood­ing Twitter’s Trending Topics the next day noth­ing. That is because usu­ally Internet fame is just like any other fad. Fads quickly fade. So why do so many peo­ple want to be famous so badly?

Years ago fame was this untouch­able exis­tence that was only held by an élite group of peo­ple. Talented in what they did. I’m refer­ring to the Greta Garbos, Cary Grants, Rita Hayworths and Fred Astaires. People who excelled in their field and were wor­shipped and adored by mil­lions of fans. People who lived in big man­sions and drove big cars and lived behind the vel­vet rope.

Fast for­ward to today’s crop of the fame hun­gry celebs who think rented bling, cars, drugs and houses are sta­tus sym­bols. Who rub shoul­ders with the pseudo rich and famous who can range from singers to adult film stars. Fame has changed dra­mat­i­cally. Anyone can have it and any­one will go to any length just to expe­ri­ence it. That’s why real­ity TV is the new “star” vehi­cle and the already “famous” are turn­ing to the Internet to become even more famous. This has back­fired for many turn­ing fame into infamy for things that they would much rather for­get.

While we blog­gers are not seek­ing fame per se and cer­tainly not infamy we can use some of the same tools to get our­selves on the map. If some­one who has absolutely no tal­ent can draw inter­na­tional atten­tion to them­selves we could cer­tainly use that same abil­ity to grab atten­tion to what we have to share with oth­ers.

We don’t have to resort to dra­matic extremes or unscrupu­lous acts to do so. We do have to pound the vir­tual pave­ment so to speak and put in the work to get our names and sites out there. Social media as well as sites like Youtube can cre­ate legit­i­mate oppur­tu­nites for blog­gers. While inter­net fame can hap­pen quickly and van­ish even more quickly we as blog­gers want to cre­ate longevity by cosis­tently cre­at­ing a prod­uct that peo­ple will return to. By full­fill­ing some need for our read­ers with our blogs and look­ing for ways to open doors for our­selves through the power of the Internet. The tool we have at our fin­ger­tips.

Thanks for read­ing,