Internet Celebrities
For those who feel a deeper love of sharing, Internet celebrity beckons. Pop artist Andy Warhol famously said that “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Warhol spoke this most famous quote in 1968, well before YouTube and Google were anything but science fiction, yet the phrase now seems prophetic. Celebrity, once the exclusive province of people who had an abundance of talent, connections and luck, has become a more attainable goal – at least if Internet celebrity counts.
When Internet fame brings real album sales and ad offers, as it did for the Chicago-based band OK Go, achieving viral video fame pays off. The band's first viral video offering, “Here It Goes Again,” featured an intricately choreographed dance on treadmills and a tune as infectious as the visually arresting video. The group reached 50 million viewers on YouTube with that video; that doesn't include e-mailed and saved versions of the song. If one percent of the people who watch later buy the song, something that's becoming increasingly easy to do via YouTube and other video sharing sites, that equals half a million sales.
While OK Go aimed for fame with their viral videos, other Internet celebrities became famous before they realized what was happening. Gary Brolsma filmed himself lip-synching to a Moldovan pop tune called “Dragostea din Tei” that featured the phrase “nu ma, nu ma iei.” Gary's exuberant chair-dance and facial expressions delighted hundreds of millions of viewers, but tagged him with the permanent nickname Numa Numa Guy. His first instinct was to flee the limelight, but he quickly changed his mind and embraced his Internet fame, parlaying it into ads and appearances in other music vide...
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...et them offer real-time critiques of the experience. Video itself can hardly get more compact and easy to use than camera phones without subcutaneous implantation.
Content changes are likely to happen before format changes. Video is ultimately a passive medium; viewers can leave comments or create parodies in response to a viral video, but they must still watch it to get the sense of it. Print has the benefit of letting readers take a more active role, receiving information at the rate they choose instead of at the speed chosen for them by a filmmaker. Print can go viral too, so campaigns that rely on both strong written content and intriguing video may enjoy wider appeal as passive viewers take a renewed interest in becoming active readers.
Once an Internet technology becomes mainstream, the roots of the next great idea to supplant it are already growing.
As celebrities stand distinctively among the masses and cast out their halos of personality charm and strong suits of skilled abilities, the controversies about them are unavoidable shadows created from their fame. With the popularization of celebrity culture, information synchronization, and communication technology, their lives are publicly exposed and various forms of media (depending on eras) record their flaws. Tough information transmitted to audiences are frequently biased, evidences of objective reality remains, even in the remote past.
In the summer of 2012, the full music video of “Gangnam Style” was uploaded onto YouTube and was immediately a sensation, receiving over 500,000 hits on its first day and racking up millions of more hits in a matter of a week. By the end of the year 2012, the song had topped the music charts of more than thirty countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Being the first ever YouTube video to reach the milestone of one billion hits, the song took the social media by storm. These staggering statistics indicate how “Gangnam Style” was able to achieve a tipping point, thus igniting an epidemic. What made it go viral? The two main reasons responsible for the cause are the Power of Context and the Stickiness Factor.
The media plays a big role in forming people's’ values, whether it is a picture, tweet or music. These values are depicted through messages such as lyrics, like in Travie McCoy’s music video, for his song, “Billionaire.” Travie McCoy’s hit song, which features another artist Bruno Mars, was released in the year of 2010. The music video for “Billionaire,” was produced to show the different purposes of the music video and captures these purposes by using rhetorical appeals: pathos and logos.
“Posts.” Fame is a dangerous Drug: A Phenomenological Glimpse of Celebrity.” N.p. ,n.d. Web 15. Feb 2014
The star text of a celebrity can help to decipher their image and transitions they may undergo. In order to better understand these transitions, one must know the definition of a star text. A star text is the sum of everything we affiliate with celebrities, which includes their body of work, promotion, publicity, and audience participation (Jackson, 08/09/16). One must note that “celebrity doesn 't happen because someone has extraordinary qualities – it is discursively constructed by the way in which the person is publicised and meanings about them circulate” (O 'Shaughnessy and Stadler 424). Destiny Hope Cyrus, “an American singer and actress, became a sensation in the television series
Elvis was like no other entertainer in the world. The talented man’s success and music will live on as some of the best in history. Elvis inspired a generation and overall transformed the way we see and listen to music today. John Lennon’s son, John Lennon Jr., even states, “Before Elvis, there was nothing” (Klein 291). However, without the help of The Ed Sullivan Show, Elvis’ influence would not have been able to spread across the nation. Television still has that impact in today’s society. One learns of new artists and up and coming celebrities through the world of social and mass media. Today’s generation relies on the power of mass and social media to express their opinions, thoughts and creativity. Without it, this world would be stuck in a non-innovated and non-expressive culture.
Establishing a popular culture or becoming a celebrity has been a desire of many. The rewards in this life are the admiration and esteem of others, and the punishments in this life are contempt and neglect. In fact, the desire for the esteem of others is as real a want of nature as hunger, while the contempt and neglect of the world are as severe as a pain.
Individuals who pursue a career in the music industry are constantly being asked the question, “How do performing artists actually make it?” Some artists know early in life that they were meant to be in the music industry and others may simply stumble upon a great opportunity that puts them there. Whatever the case may be, most artists have different dreams and ideas of what making it is. It could be making a six figure salary for some and becoming a celebrity for others. In all cases this question needs to be answered in preparation for a successful career in the music industry. The answer to that question and the key to becoming a success within the music industry is the development and maintenance of a dedicated fanbase.
Viral marketing is a form of word-of-mouth marketing that aims to result in a message spreading exponentially and campaigns work when a message is spread exponentially and it results in a desired outcome for a brand (Stokes, R., 2010). Viral marketing uses the internet to disclose and spread the company’s products or services. It harnesses the electronic connectivity of individuals to ensure marketing messages are referred from one person to another (Stokes, R., 2010). There are two types of viral marketing. Organic viral campaigns spread with no input from the company who wants to advertise. The message or product/ service being sold by the merchant are passed around in a viral nature without any intention from the marketer (Stokes, R., 2010). In organic viral marketing, no planning was done on how to broadcast the products or services and those who expose the products or services made a choice just to pass it around by word of mouth in the internet. Amplified viral marketing on the other hand have been strategically planned, have defined goals for the brand being marketed, and usually have a distinct method of passing on the message (that can be tracked and quantified by the marketer) (Stokes , R.,2010). To go viral, sellers or services provider have to define the aims of the campaign. Sellers or service providers have to decide if the company wants brand awareness, drive traffic or make sure customers avail of the products or services. Secondly, the company should plan the message it wants to go viral. The message has to be unique and easily noticeable by consumers. Third, the message you want to convey must be passed on to others efficiently. The company has to provide incentives for sharing. The greatest ince...
Since the internet came about in the late 1900’s it has been rapidly growing in the popularity
The internet is an ever increasingly powerful tool for finding everything from entertainment to reference to daily news. When first created, the internet was only a shadow of what it has become. Most people didn't even have a computer, let alone a connection to the internet. In the last decade, however, computers have become more and more affordable, and internet service providers have become far more widespread. According to the World Almanac and Book Of Facts 2001 "By early 2000, more than 300 million people around the world were using the Internet, and it is estimated that by 2005, 1 billion people may be connected" (World Almanac). As with any new, powerful technology, the internet has brought with its positive aspects, a number of new problems which will have to be dealt with in the next several years.
The beginning of Lady Gaga’s career, unbenowst to the majority, dedicated itself soley for fame culture commentary. When Lady Gaga released her widely acclaimed album “The Fame” in August 2008, she sold 12 million copies of an album based off of the whole concept of being in a culture obsessed with becoming the celebrity as the ultimate validation of living. The media, obsessed with Lady Gaga’s whole concept, absorbed her presence in the spotlight and made her into a massive worldwide star. She once told Rolling Stone, “I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be — and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth” (Lady Gaga). Her manipulation of the public is possible from the culture revolving around celebrities. Celebration of celebrity culture is perpetuated throughout media outlets and consumed by public masses. In the Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges discusses celebrity culture and its underlying connections to pseudo-events, which are a form of mass media manipulation through a carefully crafted event. Celebrity culture and pseudo-events are often forces for economic gains through the deception of the public.
Over the last few decades celebrity and fame has changed dramatically, from Alexander the Great to Kim Kardashian. Talent and achievements no longer play a huge role when it comes to our celebrities. “Much modern celebrity seems the result of careful promotion or great good looks or something besides talent and achievement” (Epstein2) with that being said celebrity-creation has blossomed into an industry of its own. Keeping up with all the gossips from breaking up to hooking up, law suits and drama many might come to an agreement that celebrity culture is starting to be the great new art form in our new generation and that it ...
Marcel Duchamp, arguably the most influential and iconoclastic artist of the 20th Century, once said `Success is just a brush fire, you have to keep finding wood to feed it.' Never is this more true than with the Hollywood celebrity. The hundreds of celebrity successes, burning like brush-fires of variable intensity throughout the Hollywood Hills, are ultimately meaningless and palpably destructive to the film industry. In most cases, it just seems to be a matter of keeping up with the Jones's.
The Internet has received a great deal of attention in the media lately due to its tremendous