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Butuan Democrat
The greatest good is getting the enemy to surrender without ever having to fight.
-Sunzi
Crushed and Pixelized
'All of this has happened before
And all of this will happen again
So say we all.'
~ Battlestar Galactica
Rax
Holler
March 8 is International Women's Day
Rax
Webcelebrity
A couple of months ago, Forbes.com posted a “list of the biggest, brightest and most influential people on the Internet” which it dubbed as the Web Celeb 25. Unsurprisingly, with the exception of the No.1 Web Celeb, almost all of these “people” are bloggers.
The No.1 Web Celeb, Lonelygirl15 may be considered both as an aberration and as the template of things to come.
So who is this Lonelygirl15? The term “people” was rather loosely used on her, so were the words “biggest”, “brightest” and “most influential”. In all likelihood, you probably haven’t even heard of her. Lonelygirl15 gained much of her web following and subsequent web-infamy by publishing her video diaries on YouTube. She was later on unmasked as an actress paid to play a role of a 15 year old girl. (See entry on Lonelygirl15 in Wikipedia)
Who was the Web Celeb? Was it the 15-year old girl who gained a large fanbase in YouTube or the actress who duped them all?
I’d like to think that if she had been real, Lonelygirl15 would have been a legitimate Web Celebrity. She wouldn’t have been ranked No.1 and probably not in the top 25, but still famous in her own niche of the Internet. I believe it was the expose and ensuing online wank just made her more Internet-famous and contributed to her rise in the ranks among other Web Celebs. It is doubtful she would make the list next year now that her 15 minutes of fame are over.
Lonelygirl15 is an aberration because unlike the other top webcelebrities, Lonelygirl15 was a character or in blogger’s lingo – a sockpuppet. She certainly differed from the other 24 webcelebs. Those were real people whose Internet fame flowed from the credibility they had built over years of online presence and the trust they commanded from their online following. These people are not just famous for the sake of fame or incredulous uproar from betrayed fans, they are famous because they make an impact in the consciousness of their followers/readers/fans, in the industry they work in and even in the real world.
Notwithstanding her infamy, Lonelygirl15 is the first truly successful video blogger to become Internet-famous. For now WebCelebs primarily write blogs, not star in them. However with the rise of video technologies, Forbes predicted that Internet fame may soon be dominated by the video-bloggers.
This is an intriguing probability since most of the top blogs already incorporate some form of video-blogging in addition to written articles. It would certainly change the dynamics if traditional movie star good looks and charisma are added as a criterion for becoming a Web Celeb. Pity, I rather like and admire these Web Celebs, ordinary looking men and women who become famous on the basis of their blog's content and on their personality rather than on their looks.
posted by Crushed & Pixelized @ 12:25 AM;
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