Meme celebrities institutionalize their viral fame into sustained commercial businesses.

Evidence

In the third stage, “Meme celebrities,” a meme persona achieves extended and sustained public celebrity by growing their meme fame into a stable, sustained, and usually diversified commercial business. This requires the person behind the meme to channel their social media estates, press appearances, and commercial engagements intentionally into profit-oriented endeavors such that they become instituted as vocational public figures. Often, this specific effort involves not just the face behind the meme but also a team of public relations and publicity specialists or agencies that usually operate within the confines of traditional media structures, in a crossover that media scholars Karine Nahon and Jeff Hemsley have called “networked gatekeeping”. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 172

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the third stage ‘meme celebrities’ as distinct from faces of memes and meme personae, and introduces the concept of ‘networked gatekeeping’.
• XREF: This three-stage typology connects to the reader’s own typology-building in the influencer space; the staged progression from face to persona to celebrity parallels stage models elsewhere in media scholarship. — connects to: Meme virality can generate sustainable income for owners within days. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 173; Viral fame monetized through podcasting, casino appearances, and meme coins — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 815; Celebrity functions as stored attention convertible into commercial influence — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 150 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Viral fame monetized through podcasting, casino appearances, and meme coins #exemplifies (0.95) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 815
• Meme virality can generate sustainable income for owners within days. #corroborates (0.80) — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 173
• Celebrity fame now functions as a loss leader for other products #expands (0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 656
• Celebrity functions as stored attention convertible into commercial influence #expands (0.75) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 150