Once upon a time, on a computer far, far away, the middle school version of myself updated her Myspace with the hopes of one day, maybe being “internet famous”. But really what is internet fame, and why do we crave it so badly? Some people think that internet fame goes hand in hand with the traditional fame associated with movie stars and musicians; others think of it as ego-boosting nonsense. We all know somebody who we would consider internet famous, but it is how other people view that same person that is important. The following argument will try to rationalize the idea of the microcelebrity that stems from massive integration of social media; I will propose that the quest for microfame a symptom of a larger social issue.
Times Square is always crowded; but on one particular June day, a mass of Team Starkid fans wrapped around New York’s Roseland Ballroom. For us Starkid fans, meeting in person was an incredible experience; we discussed our favorite plays, acted out our favorite scenes and engaged in mass musical numbers. For all of the people passing by, tourists and businessmen alike, we were lunatics, dressed up in nonsensical costumes singing about becoming Starship Rangers. For those brave enough to approach this bizarre crowd, there was one single question repeated; “What in the world is a Starkid?” “Oh! Starkid, they’re great! They’re this theater group on YouTube, and they make parody musicals…” And as we would ramble, the once brave questioners backed away slowly thinking quietly to themselves, “isn’t YouTube just for the internet?’
Afterwards, I became fascinated with this idea that for all of the people waiting in line, the Starkid actors were huge stars, but to the people passing us in the street they were absolutely no one. And this is becoming a very prominent trend within our social media environments.
Starkid Productions began as a theater group at the University of Michigan, staging parody musicals, such as The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (both remained un-uploaded and unknown outside the community) (“Starkid Productions”). Things drastically changed with their staging of A Very Potter Musical, parodying J.K. Rowling’s books. As the story goes, the Starkids recorded the musical, uploading it so the actors could see their work. It did not take long until Potter fans found the video and it went viral. The Starkids went on to make an additional Potter musical, as well as a Batman parody, and two original musicals. Their virability also brought them two sold out live concert tours. Despite their success, when I mention Starkid to anyone in the “real world” I tend to get blank stares; it is not until I enter the virtual world that the Starkid actors are considered famous.
If this is the case, then can the Starkid actors actually be called famous? Clay Shirky, in Here Comes Everybody notes the nature of fame; “Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention, more arrows pointing out then in” (91). In order to achieve fame, one needs two different things; they must have a minimum amount of attention from an audience and they have to be unable to reciprocate that attention. Kevin Allocca, YouTube trends analysis, also notes that anyone has the potential to become famous so long as they have access to sites reliant on user generated content (Why Videos Go Viral). If this is true, anyone has the potential to become famous –or do they?
Prior to this new media environment, fame was closely controlled by the larger media outlets. It was exclusive and glamorous. While people may have dreamed about their name in lights, they most certainly recognized it as a small possibility. But now with an abundance of sharing platforms available, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Tumblr the fame game has completely changed. No longer is fame determined by the owners of media, but rather the audience (Hammock). However, this is not to say that we no longer need famous people. Psychologist Nathaneal Fast investigates celebrities, noting that even as our access to technology increases, we still need connections with other people (Aron). Fame for us becomes that connection, whether we are generating our own audiences or are participating within the fan community. We live in a media environment that you do not even need to be good at what you do, just as long as you can promote yourself you can become famous. This changes our own evaluations of our self-worth. We think that in order to be somebody we need to be seen.
Looking once again at Starkid, they fit the Shirkyan model of fame. They have a fan base large enough that they cannot reciprocate all of the attention they receive (I’m still waiting for that tweet from Darren Criss..). But where do we, the average internet user, fit into this model? Anyone can become famous now with a few mouse clicks and a little luck; or at least famous to a small specialized group of people (as the folks in the Tumblr world call them, “fandoms” –subcultures of fans coming together for a common interest). Almost every person who addresses this topic of microfame falls back on an Andy Warhol quote, “in the future everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes”. But this isn’t necessarily true; rather, it is said that in the future everyone will be famous to fifteen people. But if this is true, then we see flaws in the Shirkyian definition of fame. The idea of fame is changing with the new media environment as it become less exclusive.
But fame in itself, is a very general term. The idea of fame is linked closely to the idea of surveillance; how many people are watching you? Prior to social media prominence, we saw two different forms of surveillance. We had the panopticon, “the many observed by the few” and the sousveillance, or “the few observed by many”, our model of traditional fame, both which are distinctive. But now, social media appears to brings us a new model, participatory surveillance in which “the many observe the many” (Horning).
In this time of participatory surveillance there is an internalized attitude of I don’t exist unless others see me exist. On any given day one’s twitter stream gives promise of “going to the gym”s and pictures of overly arranged food. Why? Because we are validated when we put these things online to share. Rob Horning of the New Enquiry calls it the “threat of invisibility”. Being visible now is both an economical benefit according to Horning as well as a means of establishing a “relevant” sense of identity.
Our potential for microfame contributes to the larger issue of the attitude we adapt when interacting with others. As Horning says, “no one sets out to be microfamous”. Therefore, we redefine who we are and how we present ourselves to the world as a means of branding ourselves in hopes of making it big. And it isn’t long before this becomes a snowballing effect. We face the threat of invisibility, so we reach out through social media, but there is always someone with more followers than you. We then extend our reach in hopes of becoming more visible, and therefore making ourselves seem more relevant. It’s like we’re participating in a Tom and Jerry chase with ourselves. What can I do to better brand myself and make myself more known? And much like Tom can never catch Jerry, we oftentimes never see the fame we are trying to achieve. As Lakshmi Chaudhry notes in her essay Mirror Mirror on the Web, fame on the internet is reduced entirely to attention; “the advent of cyber-fame is remarkable in that is divorced from any significant achievement.” With the threat of invisibility so present there is an overarching attitude of if you can get famous, do it. This results in a creation as self that is as authentic as an MTV reality show.
What this means for us is that our generation is more prone to narcissism, in which we think that we above all else should be known, and our cause is the most worthy (even if we have done nothing to deserve it). In her essay, Chaudhry cites a study measuring scores on the standard Narcissism Personality Inventory test. It was concluded that from 1987 to 2006 there was a 65 percent increase in score on the test for the average college student. Additionally, as of 2000, half of the children under 12 who were polled considered being famous “part of the American Dream.” This is becoming the mindset of America. Fame isn’t just a goal, but rather a necessity that has been made possible because of the new social media environment. One Britney Jo, writing on iwannabefamous.com (a website that features different people on a passionate quest for fame) “Sometimes I’ll cry at night wishing and praying for a better life to be famous…”
There is a huge issue with this way of thinking. Of all of the content that is contributed to the web environment, only a small amount gets to be viral. Kevin Allocca tells us that 48 hours of video gets uploaded to YouTube every minute but only a few videos will stand out (Why Videos Go Viral). Despite this knowledge, we still try to be famous.
For Starkid, their off-beat nerd humor is the catalyst for their fame, creating an overall positive environment surrounding their work. This, however, is not always the case. The desire for fame has become so strong that people are willing to tarnish their own reputations for their fifteen minutes. Take for example infamous internet celebrity Chris Crocker. His YouTube blog exploded with his “Leave Britney Alone” video posted in September of 2007. The video featured Crocker crying under a blanket, lashing out against the media outlets criticizing a post-meltdown Britney Spears. The piece is now known to be performance art, but after its going viral, it brought a lot of attention to Crocker. Although he notes he had a genuine message, he was widely parodied and portrayed as crazy. Despite initially being infamously known as “that Britney guy”, Chris Crocker has launched himself a music career, as well as a documentary of his life, and an adult film career.
Britney Spears herself represents an interesting internet phenomenon; the celebrity + social media effect. Spears was famous prior to the social media boom –unfortunately for her, her meltdown was not. Rob Horning, in his essay Hi Haters! uses the Britney meltdown (or more importantly, the post-meltdown after effects) as a means of looking at the effect of the constant surveillance that accompanies fame. Britney shaved her head, and blamed the media for objectifying her. As Horning puts it, “the reassuring lesson we are supposed to enjoy here is that too much fame will cause a person to disintegrate, and Britney’s meltdown somehow dignifies our relative obscurity.” However, we know that this is not the cause. By the very nature of social media, we are not being even the least bit of obscure. Thus Britney’s breakdown, shows the dark side of internet fame.
Now, it would be right to reason that because internet stars rise all the time that time spent as a “celebrity” would decrease. Because social media allows the celebrity to interact with their fans, our stars are getting bigger, for longer periods of time. A Google News study showed that although the number of people considered famous has increased, they retain their fame because of an increase in blogs talking about them (Aron). (Sorry Britney, that meltdown will be with you forever).
In 2011, two psychologists, Yalda T. Uhls and Patricia M. Greenfield, examined the way in which we view fame and its importance amongst other personal attributed. In order to do this they looked at the values portrayed by the media throughout five decades using the example of television. The defined fame as possessing “ambition,”” glamour,” “vulnerability,” “meaning derived from others”, “attention seeking,” “conceitedness,” “social access,” “materialism,” and “extroversion.”The study revealed that the media industries, once emphasizing community feeling and benevolence, now portray a need for fame, personal achievement, and popularity. The study went on to show that youth ranked fame as the most important value throughout the five decades, despite the older participants noting a difference in emphasis of fame over time. They note that the biggest value shift has a close correlation to a rise in communicative technologies. From the 90s to the 2000s, youth internet action has doubled, with nearly 84% of children having access to some for of high speed internet by 2009 (whether it be by computer or mobile device). Not only are children seeing fame being portrayed, but they are given ways to pave their own way to stardom from an early age. This led the researchers to conclude that although there may be additional causes, technology enabled this large shift (Uhls). It is clear that people, more now than ever, have a strong desire for fame.
As fame becomes an internalized value it changes the way that children develop. That’s not to say that people haven’t always had a desire for fame. It is however, a much more prominent idea that the media industry feeds off of. Dan Schneider, producer of Nickelodeon shows that center around youth megastars (ICarly, Victorious, The Amanda Show) notes, “If there is anything I’ve learned about kids today –and I’m not saying this is good or bad –it’s that they all want to be stars” (Uhls). The potential for microfame becomes learned at an incredibly young age now. Horning notes the trend of children becoming more self aware at younger ages as a result of this phenomena. Whereas once their identity was structured by categories like gender, race, and social class, now youth are constructing a brand identity for themselves. Before internet fame was a fathomable thought, desire for fame still existed, but it was recognized that work and talent are needed.
These are ideas that would make Jean Baudrillard roll over in his grave. Baudrillard, a French theorist used the term “simulacra” to describe instances like these in which a sign has no true counterpart in the physical world. However, the simulacra is more than just a representation, but an acquiring of traits so that the real and the simulated become blurred (Sturken). The perfect example of this is the Disney theme park Epcot. In a single day visitors can shop in France, dine in Italy, and end the evening exploring an Aztec pyramid, no passport necessary. While these experiences are simulated, they are so closely mimicked, from the buildings, the foods, the costumes, that they can feel like authentic experiences. They key word of course, being feel. Baudrillard’s theories warn of a world in which the real and the simulated are inseparable, reducing the world to inauthentic experience.
And if we look at Baudrillard’s terms, internet fame is not all that far off from a day at Epcot. To dismiss fame achieved on the internet, such as that achieved by the Starkid actors, would be wrong. However, it would also be wrong to say that traditional fame and microcelebrity are on the same plane. The problem with microcelebrity is that it is all about perception. There is no definite answer as to what makes people famous. Internet fame falls within this category of the simulacra.
When we look at fame, whether it be Starkid, Britney Spears, or Chris Crocker, it is oftentimes difficult to separate internet fame from traditional fame. We are now in a “hybrid culture” of broadcasted media versus the internet. In the same place that Starkid rises to fame, we see a “deglamorization of fame” when Britney tweets to her fans “Love love love u all!” Starkid seems more famous, Britney seems more on our level, and this is the problem with the simulacra.
There is no doubting Britney Spear’s fame, regardless of what fandoms you may or may not belong to on the internet. She’s frequently in magazine headlines, she’s on TV and on the radio; her fame goes unquestioned. However, there are debates of whether or not Starkid is famous. They have a wide reach on the internet thanks to Youtube and Tumblr, therefore their name is well known on the internet community, cultivating a large fan base. We can consider the type of fame that Starkid has to be simulated. Their fame is not fame in a traditional sense. Rather, their success mirrors fame in a way that for the Starkid fandom, makes it difficult to distinguish from the real thing.
In this new media environment it is very easy for a person to feel as if they are achieving fame. Anyone can set up a website that looks credible and has somewhat interesting content –as long as it is interesting to a small group of people. From there, others can access that content and give instant feedback. Just a few comments from a small number of strangers can give this feeling of simulated fame. Richard Schickel in the essay I Blog Therefore I Am shows this possibility by saying “where everyone is a (self-appointed) authority there is, in fact, no authority.” If I think you’re famous, you are, no questions about it.
In the conclusion of their study, Ulhs and Greenfield emphasis is placed on the media industries role as cultural value educators; “…media content providers must be cognizant of the messages they are sending young people”. But even more so, it is our own responsibility to recognize the issue. Internet fame is great –just look at the success of the Starkid actors, the internet helped launch their acting careers. But it took hard work and planning before getting any recognition. Achieving this fame is not a guarantee. One of the implications of the study is that our obsession with becoming famous stifles our ability for success in the real world; the exact same thing that the simulacra warns against. In many ways, the idea of fame has become disassociated with achievement, rather it is all about attention. Our work becomes inauthentic and hastily made to stand its fifteen minutes in the spotlight.
Therefore, we need to find a way to break us from this mindset that we need to be famous to be somebody. “Being microfamous doesn’t make you any less than a nobody” as Rob Horning bluntly puts it. The quest for microfame is merely a symptom of society’s larger identity crisis in the new media environment; identity is now constructed by our real world appearances as well as the brands we give ourselves online. It is often thought that visibility gives one self a sense of relevance and therefore solves this balancing act. In actuality, it just furthers this divide, giving way to more inauthenticity.
Of course there will be celebrities who rise above all other web content to become megastars but this is an anomaly. We apply the ideas of the microfame to ourselves and to people who generate small audiences online –although we never would call them microfamous, we’ll just stick to famous. But when we do this, Horning notes that we put ourselves into a crisis mode, where we are stuck in constant surveillance. Our response is just to keep branding ourselves to our audiences, catching us in a feedback loop.
Just the other day I was talking to a stranger about what we wanted to do with our college degrees. “I don’t care about becoming famous –as a matter of fact, I know I don’t want people prying into my life. Success for me is doing great work in a field I love, and leaving a significant impact on at least one person.” In that moment, my response of “I just want to be a rockstar” seemed somehow inappropriate. But I think this attitude is a good approach to managing social networking tools. Fame is not important, but leaving a significant impact is. So go ahead and be proud that you got 20 retweets, or that you’ve just hit 1,000 views on your guitar cover of Wonderwall, but don’t dwell on the idea of needing to be known. Our focus shouldn’t be on going global for fifteen minutes, but rather it is about making a lifetime impact on a few others.
Sources:
Aron, Jacob. “Stars Play the Fame Game.” New Scientist 28 Mar. 2012.
Bennett, Jessica. “The Flip Side of Internet Fame.” The Daily Beast. Newsweek, 21 Feb. 2008.
Chaudhry, Lakshmi. “Mirror, Mirror On the Web.” The Nation 29 Jan. 2007: 19-22.
Hammock, Anne. “The New Fame: Internet Celebrity.” CNN. 01 May 2008.
Horning, Rob. “Hi Haters!” Weblog post. The New Enquiry.16 Nov. 2012.
Schickel, Richard. “I Blog Therefore I Am.” Society Nov. 2012: 521-24.
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin, 2008.
“Starkid Productions.” Wikipedia. 2012.
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford ; New York: Oxford UP, 2001.
Uhls, Yalda T., and Patricia M. Greenfield. “The Rise of Fame: An Historical Content Analysis.” Journal of Psychological Research on Cyberspace (2011): CyberPsychology.
Weinberger, David. “How the Web Changed Fame.” CNN. 17 Feb. 2012.
Why Videos Go Viral. Perf. Kevin Allocca. TED: Ideas worth Spreading. Feb. 2012.
Rebecca Helme 