Early Bay Area tech elites openly despised aspirational internet celebrity
Evidence
But for the most part, internet celebrity was met by those I talked to with ambivalence at best and contemptuousness at worst. Glenda Bautista told me that she was struck by the people “fetishizing geekdom” when she moved to the Bay Area in 2003. “Why are all the nerds like your rock stars?” she asked. Twitter founder Ev Williams’s response to someone “young and capable” attempting to achieve internet fame was “A) that’s probably not going to work, and B) what a waste of time.” When asked about internet celebrity, Annalee Newitz, editor of the Gawker science fiction blog io9, thought it was “completely repulsive.” Newitz perceives people who become famous for something they’ve done—she referred to popular blogs I Can Has Cheezburger and Cute Overload—as deserving of their visibility: “You know, sometimes people become popular just because they’re doing something cool. And, you know, that’s not really their fault.” Meanwhile, she perceived people “who pursue [fame] purely just to manipulate the network and manipulate people’s responses” as “deeply scary.” — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 337
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the earlier chapter’s framing of ‘the attention economy’ and to Bourdieu’s distinction between symbolic and economic capital — fame-by-doing vs fame-by-seeking maps onto authenticity discourse. — connects to: Online fame bypassed gatekeepers without seizing cultural power over taste; Internet celebrity’s deep impacts grow quietly rather than loudly — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 58; Tech scene micro-celebrity made fame itself the goal, detached from accomplishment — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 275 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Tech scene micro-celebrity made fame itself the goal, detached from accomplishment
#corroborates(0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 275 - Online fame bypassed gatekeepers without seizing cultural power over taste
#corroborates(0.75) - Internet celebrity’s deep impacts grow quietly rather than loudly
#complicates(0.70) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 58 - Early internet celebrity scholarship studied platform emergence rather than celebrities themselves.
#responds-to(0.70) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 627