Is the Internet Fueling the End of Celebrity Fixation? You Bet!

Is it possible that we soon won't have to hear about who Paris Hilton is screwing this week? Kurt Anderson says in New York Magazine that the country's "insane fame fixation" may be coming to an end, again. Back in the 70s, he says, people who lived in trailer parks were the big readers of celeb magazines, he says. But now this 30 year cycle may have peaked.

Although Anderson doesn't credit the impact of the Internet on cultural trends, doh, the birth of YouTube, My Space, Flickr, and other user-generated content is creating a whole new category of celebrity. A video or consumer-created ad spread by viral marketing can result in millions of downloads in a short time, and have more legs than a weekly magazine, which wraps fish seven days later.

P.S.: I do love this paragraph in his story. It goes a long way toward explaining both the state of PR and the decline of print tabloids:

Magazine editors gripe about the rings they have to jump through to book the hottest possible celebrities ("The PR people," one complained to me, "are really such fucking fuckbrains"), but they still do whatever's necessary. And the jonesing for any speck of celebrity pixie dust can have a crack-whore quality.

Comments

Post a comment

Email this story to a friend

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.whatsnextonline.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/3048