Internet Celebrities

For today’s post I would like to talk about how web 2.0 given average human beings to achieve levels of unprecedented popularity on the internet. One of the major mediums in which this phenomenon in taking place is Youtube. The Vblog, or video blog allows any internet user to upload a video onto the internet for the masses. All of a sudden ordinary every day people with a webcam have become overnight celebrities. Some people even get attention through completely unintentional means. They way they get attention are through a variety of different means, whether it be through humor, display of talent, or sheer malignant display of narcissism.

But what is driving their instant fame? It is bored everyday internet users using any form of entertainment they could possibly find online.

Firstly, I’d like to talk about the self-made celebrity Vblog personas. My 13 year old little brother is a big fan of famous YouTube personality called Kevjumba.

Kevjumba is an ordinary kid who makes frequent weblogs about his own thoughts, views, opinions and life stories. In total, his YouTube videos have been viewed a total of about 50 million times and he has only uploaded about 45 of them. Of course, a certain percentage of those are repeat views, but still the number 30 million is quite astounding. Thus, on average his video postings average about 1,111,111 views.

When Kevjumba makes his videos he doesn’t need to spend any money, minimal time and man power (he is a one-man show). Yet he is able to put together a successful show with millions of eager fans, hungrily awaiting his next video posting. And this is just one example of many ordinary people that have taken advantage of the even playing field of the internet. This teenage play has proven that anyone with the right amount of charisma, talent, ideas, or sense of humor can be an instant overnight internet celebrity.

Another example of how not to leverage the internet to achieve personal popularity can be described by a term “Malignant Narcissism” coined by my Business Computing Professor Talbert. Malignant narcissism is an example of shocking behavior that is done for the sole reason of garnering more attention.

An example of malignant narcissism can be seen in this video:

In the video a young man by the name of Chris Croker publicly displays his hysteria and uncontrollable emotional outburst by defending the pop-star Britney Spears—to a very comical effect. This one video garnered about 24 million hits. This has a very similar phenomenon to reality TV, wherein people liked to see other people displaying this kind of atypical behavior in order to have the believe that in the world out there, there are people more messed up than they are.

With the internet’s ability to give one person access to a massive audience, websites like YouTube are creating instant celebrities who provide easy to access entertainment to a bored audience base.