Lolabelle in NYC

I'm your typical 30 year old New York City singleton. Or, I was in 2006 when I wrote these posts. Now I'm married and have a baby.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

New York Times Misses the Point (again!)

I thought the NYT’s article on Fame as Motive was pretty interesting, but man, they didn’t even mention the Internet in their analysis of fame. I think they totally missed a major turning point in our concept of fame.

Yesterday, Gawker called someone “Book Hot” and then upgraded them to “TV Hot.” Likewise, there is “Us Weekly famous,” “Reality TV famous” and finally, “Internet famous.” This article treats all fame equally missing out on the revolution in fame that is taking place right now, as I type this.

As the means of production become more accessible to the masses, so do the means to become famous. Of course, that dilutes the notion of fame too. More and more people can be less and less famous. The Long Tail of fame, if you will.

So, I think the interesting question is not, what motivates people to try to be the next Paris Hilton (which the NYT attempted to address,) but rather, what motivates hordes of teenagers to perfect their myspace pages or bloggers to record their most intimate thoughts? The NYT article says, “Public recognition can bring a heightened focus on the self.” I wonder what that will do to a whole generation of kids? Here our society is taking a permanent and major shift towards navel-gazing and the New York Times is talking about Kurt Cobain? Wow…I’m stunned by their lack of insight.

2 Comments:

  • At 11:14 AM, Blogger Laura said…

    BTW, looks like Chris Anderson of brilliant Long Tail book, is having a little party on Thursday evening. Anyone want to go with me?

    http://bookclub.meetup.com/514/events/5017738/

     
  • At 11:57 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Nice post. With kids perfecting their Myspace pages and becoming "internet famous" based on their number of profile views, there's a difference between "famous" and "popular." They might think they're popular when they have a high number of hits from strangers, giving them an inflated sense of self while in reality they may not be popular at all.

     

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