Edited by author 07-08-2002 01:52 PM
I'm seeking some input for a potential story. Why hasn't the Internet made more people famous? The number of people who have entered the pop-culture mainstream purely as a result of their Internet activities is very small. There's Mahir, Drudge and... anyone else? Why does Internet "stardom" so rarely cross over into mass-market popularity? Post your thoughts here or send me an e-mail. I'll ask before quoting anyone. Thanks! --David

(7/8/02 update: The story I was planning to write turned into this story about Mahir. Background info here.)

Hi. I don't really have any input toward answering your main question, but I wanted to mention someone else who has achieved their "fame" through their internet activities: Harry Knowles of Austin-based Ain't It Cool News (http://aint-it-cool-news.com). Somehow he gained influence in Hollywood as an amateur gossip-monger, for better or worse.

The Web hasn't built a system to mass produce stardom yet, which is what the music and film industries are. Sony, Viacom, and AOL/TW spend billions of dollars promoting actors and singers through conduits like Entertainment Weekly and MTV, but the Web doesn't have anything like that. The only star-building infrastructure the Web has is a loose network of chat rooms, message boards, weblogs, and communities that operate on word-of-mouth.

The net also is very new compared to TV, radio/music, and film. Those who know the "stars of the web" are folks who are on this beast 24/7, and read about the latest craze via email from chums, and what jkottke mentioned already.

It's also interesting that it's not necessarily an individual that becomes "famous" via the net, but it's the website itself that has fame attached to it. These famous sites can also carry the "15 minute / MC Hammer" status, as well. I'm sure you remember Hampster Dance and that All Your Base Are Belong To Us site...
 
I figure, just give it a couple years for speeds to catch up and then the merger of video/film & music will come more into play on the web. Until then, we can only hope and wait to see Jkottke star in "The Blogger: Triumph Over Thought" ;)

I think jkottke and cherz have the right idea. I would add that reasons for what they've cited may be the relative anonymity of the web. You may have a sense of a person's personality from reading their website and you may know their name, but you're probably less likely to recognize them in public like you would a movie, tv, or music star, even if they do have plenty of photos of themseleves plastered all over the net. it's probably easier to parallel a web personality with a director... someone behind the scenes.

Fame is all about scarcity of information. The less I know about Jack Nicholson, the more I can fill in all the pieces of what I think he's like, and the more I like him. But the web is all about too much information. Wanna know about me? One Google search and you'll have enough info to ruin your whole day - and turn me from a famous person into a real person.

The web is bad for fame ... and that's why I like it.

Edited by author 03-18-2002 11:46 PM
Two factors that contribute are the narrowcast topic-based format of the net and the lack of video. Not enough people 'tune in' to one particular personality on a consistent basis. There is no Cronkite of the net and Ananova has no personality. On the net we don't collect around personalities and media sources as much as ideas and memes. It takes too long to get to know a person because the net deprives most people the sound and vision needed to assess individual character and style. Stardom on the net is specialized because the audience that creates the 'famous' is able to focus attention much more tightly than the standard 200 channels. Every point on the Dewey Decimal system has its Kottke, and it's this wide distribution that prevents critical mass crossover. Porn stars and online game characters are likely to break out first. But porn stars don't get famous for their depth of personality and game characters have no depth at all in real life. Maybe we should just stick with ideas and memes.

Christopher C Anderson
<my initials>net@att.net

"Fame, puts you there where things are hollow" - Bowie

Well ... as far as I can tell, no diary or annotated reading list has ever, in the history of the world, made anyone famous. Perhaps famous posthumously--but only if you're of Pepys' or Anne Frank's calibre, say. And these things make up the bulk of (personal) web content.

Generally you need to *do* something to become famous, like sing or act or write or govern or do prize-winning research. (Which Drudge does, of course. Mahir is famous for being a goose.) Famous people aren't famous for purely arbitrary reasons.

Derek: Jack Nicholson's famous because there's a scarcity of information about him? And my grandmother? I don't understand your argument.

Jason: are you saying that famous people (Britney Spears?) become famous through the marketing efforts of large corporations? I do agree that marketing helps, and that no corporation is going to promote a would-be famous internet person because there's no money in it. I'm arguing, though, that for the most part, nothing on the internet is of interest to more than a few thousand people. There's nothing here worth marketing in the first place.

This doesn't mean that I don't love the internet, that I don't love the people I've met via the internet, and that I don't appreciate the interactions made possible by the internet. It does mean that I think questions like "why hasn't the internet made more people famous?" as silly. If you can be famous on the web, you can be famous elsewhere. There's no talent exclusive to the web that doesn't translate into the non-web world.

--Michael

Edited by author 03-19-2002 08:35 AM
As Stillwell says, no diary or annotated reading list ... and in the U.S. I don't know if you could even name anyone who got famous-as-you-define it solely due to magazines (perhaps Tina Brown). Currently the Web is a lot of writing. Perhaps there are some stories soon to come of the next South Park creators that get their start due to the Web.
   Amongst people who read, the Onion is much better known than it would be if it had remained paper-only. And Google is "famous" for its usefulness, but I'm sure that's not what you mean.

There are also the Internet-celebs like Jeff Bezos, who's certainly famous because of the Internet. At first, I'd assumed I could think of others like Bezos, but he's really one of the only biz-oriented net-celebs who's been clever enough to use other media to promote himself.

I mean, there are "famous" people on the web: Dave Winer of UserLand for one. But who outside the web knows about them?

It's true that the web hasn't been that good at producing (or even enhancing) "off-line" celebrities.

First of all, I would have to ask you to define exactly what "fame" is. Is it money? Notoriety? Tons of hot babes? There are plenty of people I would consider "famous" on the Internet today. The question is, are they getting filthy rich from what they're doing...probably not. One weakness of the Internet even today is, that not everyone uses it. Many "average" users are only using the Internet to find cheap plane tickets and get email.

What about the X-10 ads? Everyone has seen one of those at one time or another. Are they famous (infamous?) Take for instance Dell computer. What if they had instead chose to advertise Ben Curtis (Steven) in a pop-up ad that said "Dude, you're getting a Dell" every time it opened instead of the commercials on TV. Would he be as famous as he is now...I doubt it.

On the other hand, there are many things on the web that (I don't think) would transfer into the real-world as well as the on the web. Take for example Sam Brown's explodingdog. One difference on the web is that much of the content is written in first person. By the author, about the author. Not by a team of writers developing what the character should be.

one thing to remember, of course, is that it's pretty hard for TV/movie/music personalities to get "famous" these days too, in the sense that millions of people can recognize them even if they aren't directly familiar with their work. given that, i'd say that Marc Andreesen, for a time anyway, was at least as famous as, say, the second male lead on a non-hit network sitcom. Similarly, well-endowed flauntrepreneur Danni Ashe has to be at least as famous as any of Pam Anderson's cohorts on "VIP." Throw in Harry Knowles too, who somebody already mentioned earlier -- aside from Roger Ebert and the guy who replaced Siskel, Knowles is probably the world's most well-recognized movie critic. and also there's Napster's Shawn Fanning, who while all but forgotten now, was a pretty ubiquitous media presence in 2000. And below the level of these examples, there's probably dozens, if not hundreds, of people (Jay Stile, Rob Malda, Drew Curtis, Wil Wheaton, Jennifer Ringley, etc.) who have the same kind of fame as the lead singer of a band like Modest Mouse has -- to the niche audiences that develop around them, they're definitely "famous." To everyone else, they're fairly anonymous. It is interesting, though, that the mass-market websites that attract enough traffic to actually make someone famous to millions of people haven't made more of an effort to develop/promote homegrown Internet celebrities who actually do whatever they do on the Internet...