Gonch and I had some fun with the concept of "micro-celebrity" on a podcast awhile ago. The concept of celebrity at any scale is silly. On one hand, working in radio, I met my share of truly famous people, and I would guess that 90% of them were uninteresting, assholes or generally shallow people. On the other hand, I was often treated as a celebrity by radio listeners in a way that was completely absurd. I mean, I shit sitting down too, and talking to tens of thousands of people at a time hardly is worthy of any recognition. That, and I was really a schmuck who couldn't afford to move out of his parents' house on a radio salary.
But the Internet has enabled entire new classes of celebritards. Wired has a cover story on a woman who makes it her job to be famous for being an attention whore. Are you kidding? I can't decide if this is a sad statement about the attention whores or the state of our culture.
You even see them on coaster Web sites. We have one who never posts anything unless it's about her and what she did or who she knows. Another always has to post with passive-aggressive nonsense about who he knows and how important he perceives himself to be. It's annoying.
I have a great deal of respect for people who openly share what they think, whether it be on a street corner or on the Internet, but I'm annoyed by people who do it for the attention. I think it cheapens human interaction.
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