The Microfame Game and the New Rules of Internet Celebrity
Friday, July 4th, 2008
Rex Sorgatz is a link blogger at fimoculous. He follows internet culture, music, tv, media, tech and recently published an article in New York Magazine on how to become microfamous in 8 steps. I thought it was interesting and decided to interview Rex about his eight steps (self-publish, stylize, overshare, respond, ally, diversify, create controversy, persist).
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Great piece. What is the next step? What do you do with said microfame? Fame burns fast and one should be ready to leverage it somehow. Any ideas?
Go work for a bigger company who will use your fame?
Interesting to see Numa Numa guy referenced since really all he did with his original video was follow step #1. So the Golden Rule is to first create something that captures people’s imagination which is obviously the art/really-tough-part.
Nice post sarah, good food for thought
Hey Graham, thanks for watching and commenting!! I think I’d have to agree with the golden rule as being the hardest part.
If you can do that and do it more than once you can last with out the other steps. I know some people like Lisa Nova and BoBurnham who don’t follow the other steps, but because they follow the first one really really well they are successful.
everybody always occasionally writes the ‘rules’, or articles about how the game is played…
but like they say:
those that can do - Do.
and those that can’t, Teach
Nice One Lawrence.
Rex certainly does explain in simply. I just published this quote to the pop17 blog that says “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Rex is a well known microfamous blogger with a cult following.
@Daryle Dickens I have a video coming up soon that explains how you can do a lot with microfame. Case in point: Jonathan Coulton.
What I really love about Internet celebrity is that the game is so new that no one really knows where we’re going. Rex’s eight steps could easily have been applied to young turks thirty years ago. Listening to him I was reminded of Peter Gabriel, constantly exploding his public image and inviting his friends to create new sounds on his records, or Nick Lowe, calling out David Bowie on record and releasing singles on a much quicker clip than his rivals to generate publicity. While the main rules of fame are similar in both old and new media, the sudden rise and proliferation within internet microfame will definitely shape how the rules are applied. An attempt to define where the concept will end up is futile, but a deep analysis of how we gained these new celebrities may well teach us how to sustain the new culture bred within the confines of microfame.
I couldn’t agree more. I like your comparisons too.
How microfamous are you?
[...] were at a local crunch gear/tech crunch meet up and we ran into life caster Sarah Myers Austin, or is it Sarah Austin Myers, no Sarah Myers; wait I think its just Sarah Austin now.. Whew?!?!? [...]
Great show Sarah! Sounds like the chapters to your new book!?
I want to write a book some day.
??
Justin TV was NOT the early days! oh man…
lol JTV FTW
Hi Sarah,
I’m working my way backwards from most recent back…. these two interviews were great…
Fills me in a little bit on what Rex is up to since we only got a chance to sat hi for a minute at SXSW.
–Steve
pbw3gk hi! hice site!