The internet has changed the way the public interacts with celebrities
It is the season for Hollywood to celebrate itself in a sycophantic flourish of statuettes, tiaras and tear-stained platitudes. Following the Golden Globes come this week's Oscar nominations and hopefuls will be eyeing up the ballgowns and DJs that their designer friends aim to get on the front pages of the celebrity-spotting magazines. But it won't just be papers and magazines scrutinising the nominations announcement; across much of the internet, a profusion of celebrity-obsessed blogs, forums and websites will also be predicting and predicating, perpetuating our bizarre cultural obsession with all manner of gossip.
As the editor of Heat magazine's website, Samuel Pinney, tells me, gossip has always existed. "It just used to be about her at number 42, instead of the latest X Factor drop-out."
Indeed, the web pumps out gallons of weirdness about both X Factor drop-outs and her at number 42 at the speed of a Google search, so it's not surprising our hunger for useless gossip has been exploited by an ocean of online services that want to capture our attentions. But beyond this proliferation of gossip sites, the web has transformed our relationship with celebrity. Although the star system is still vital in shaping who's covered by magazines, the web has destabilised the relationship between the media and the audience. "It's moved the power over who decides if someone is a celebrity out of the hands of a select few," Pinney says.
The media apparatus that bolstered the ascent of particular personalities to public recognition was highly structured even 15 years ago, according to sociologist P David Marshall, author of The Celebrity Culture Reader. Then, a person's "people" drip-fed carefully constructed nuggets of information to a roster of approved outlets. Sure, scandals happened and tongues wagged, but now, thanks to long camera lenses and a free-to-access publication platform that reaches around the world, digital technologies have upset the balance of a highly strung industry.
It's because the web works outside the consent of the business. The audience is in charge, armed with a smartphone and a wi-fi connection. This makes us potentially more dangerous to the celebrity than ever before. Then, the worst George Clooney might have faced was a busload of strangers armed with the star maps they got from a hawker in Sunset Boulevard standing outside his well-guarded Beverly Hills fortress. Now fans can zoom into Clooney's backyard on Google Maps or report his most recent location on justspotted.com. And beyond the personal privacy issues, we've also got more control over their careers: then, the duration of their fame was determined by a story arc fabricated by a studio executive; now, the studios have a second-by-second litmus test of a celebrity's worth.
But not only has the web transformed how we interact with our idols, we the audience have also wrested the power to create celebrities from the traditional star-makers. We can now act outside the system, promoting ourselves using similar techniques as the studios, using carefully placed pieces of media and cultivating followings among specifically targeted communities. We can also thrust unwitting people into the spotlight by posting a video on Twitter or Facebook for our friends to see and pass on. Web fame is a moving target and utterly unpredictable.
David Weinberger, fellow at the Harvard Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, thinks the people who are successful at chasing online fame do it by seeking 15 followers, rather than 15 minutes. At a conference about internet trends in 2008, he said it was about cultivating those personal connections by engaging with communities and by getting mentioned on important blogs for your particular shtick.
Unfortunately, the support network built into the experience of offline celebrity that helps to protect the star from the baying masses isn't in place online and the fleeting fame often associated with successful memes or accidental "cewebrities" can often be problematic. Notoriety is a strange bedfellow, thrusting bizarre responsibilities upon people who may suddenly become well known for being the only person followed on Twitter by Kanye West, as was the case with Coventry student Stephen Holmes in the summer of 2010, or for recording a misjudged video of themselves pretending to be a Jedi knight, as happened to Canadian Ghyslain Raza in 2003. Such accidental celebrity can cause unexpected hardship for the person now doorstepped by the global media or bullied into seclusion.
The web offers carte blanche for attention-seekers, whether they are already famous or want to be. Yet online fame is still only second-best. The Star Wars Kid will never be nominated for best supporting actor. But then again, he might forever have some sort of following online and a small but steady income based on guest appearances at supermarket openings. Looking at the career trajectories of some of this week's awards nominees, it may actually be the same thing after all.
Gretha Cavazzoni Marla Sokoloff Jennifer Love Hewitt Tina Fey Gina Philips
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