WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.12 Why Everyone’s a Little Brad Pitt
Clive Thomson: Microcelebrity is the phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions but to a small group.
Geoffrey Grosenbach, a programmer in Seattle, wrote a Twitter post about a new office chair he got — then discovered people in Australia chatting about his purchase. Afriend of mine learned that her microfans had formed a Yahoo group (with 125 members!) to discuss her blog. I’ve been touched by this trend, too: I once stumbled upon a discussion-board thread arguing over whether it’s healthy for me to have a nanny look after my son during work hours — a personal detail I had revealed online.
Some of the newly microfamous aren’t very happy about all the attention. Blog pioneer Dave Winer has found his idle industry-conference chitchat so frequently live-blogged that he now feels “like a presi-dential candidate” and worries about making off-the-cuff remarks. Some pundits fret that microcelebrity will soon force everyone to write blog posts and even talk in the bland, focus-grouped cadences of Hillary Clinton (minus the cackle).
But I think these gloomy predictions are probably wrong. The truth is that people are developing interesting social skills to adapt to microfame. We’re learning how to live in front of a crowd.
WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.12 Why Everyone’s a Little Brad Pitt
Clive Thomson: Microcelebrity is the phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions but to a small group.
Geoffrey Grosenbach, a programmer in Seattle, wrote a Twitter post about a new office chair he got — then discovered people in Australia chatting about his purchase. [...]
Comments
@ 05:22
[...] Gerrit Visser wrote an interesting post today on The Age of MicrocelebrityHere’s a quick excerptWIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.12 Why Everyone’sa Little Brad Pitt. Clive Thomson: Microcelebrity is the phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions but to a small group. Geoffrey Grosenbach, a programmer in Seattle, … [...]
@ 02:36
I agree with your thesis and this could be viewed as the 2.0 aproach to the ancient known as “group of well frieds”.