The world of online social media influencers seems to be wider and more menacing than celebrities covertly shilling, a phenomenon that I wrote about yesterday. People who have not acquired fame elsewhere in other fields can apparently become purely YouTube and Instagram celebrities with a whole lot of passionate fans who follow the minutiae of their adored one’s lives with almost obsessive devotion. I wrote earlier about this phenomenon in China but it is apparently big here in the US too.
Take this bizarre story about a group of fans of such a social media celebrity named Alissa Violet who threatened all manner of revenge when she posted a video of herself with a swollen eye and a bloody lip and claimed that she and her boyfriend had been mistreated in a Cleveland bar. Her fans went nuts, shutting down the club’s website, posting scathing reviews on the Yelp site, and threatening the bar and random people in Cleveland whom they thought had been responsible for their icon’s distress.
Violet’s fans view her not as just a celebrity but one of their closest friends. She posts daily videos about her life in Los Angeles, photos of recent modeling shoots, jokes, and personal stories on Twitter and Snapchat. She tends to her legion by faving tweets, shouting out fans, and making her followers feel like they’re intimately involved in every detail of her life.
Her online army dedicates an enormous amount of time to watching her videos, commenting on her posts, and setting up stan accounts in her likeness. When they saw someone had hurt her on Saturday night, that fanbase didn’t ask questions.
You have to read the article to really get the flavor of all that her fans did. What generates this devotion that goes well beyond what one would consider normal fan behavior?
Oddly enough, a search on the web did not find any local news media covering this story. All the coverage was by what looked like online magazines and gossip sites, creating a whole lot of sound and fury that may have ultimately signified nothing.
The strange thing is that I have never heard of fans of more conventional celebrities (film stars, musicians) behaving in this way.
It’s straight-up weaponized celebrity: famous for being famous. It doesn’t hurt to be good-looking, either. But the youtube celebrity-sphere is full of all kinds of interesting characters.
I’m going to miss some of it when the online advertising bubble pops, and none of them are able to make any money shilling shoes or hair clips or whatever it is.
Mano,
I have a student who is obsessed—in an unhealthy way—with former Clevelander Jake Paul. He constantly wants to show me the latest videos as proof that he doesn’t need a diploma, he just needs to follow Paul’s example and have millions to play with.
This is magical thinking gone wild.
Jeff
Imagine if we’d had Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram et al in 1962. Do you really think that Linda McCartney wouldn’t have been receiving daily death and rape threats? Fans haven’t changed at all, they’ve just got a direct line to their idols now, instead of having to camp outside their houses or break into their hotel rooms.
sonofrojblake:
This isn’t about actual celebs though; this is not about musicians, actors, or even sports figures. This is about a cult of personality gone wild, where some people, through the use of social media, become very popular.
How are “actual celebrities” any less of a cult of personality? Do you think the popularity of “old media” celebrities is in any way related to their talents? If people cared mostly about talent, the paparazzi and celebrity gossip wouldn’t be a thing. It’s all about personalities and drama, and it’s always been about personalities and drama.
Social media just allows people to grab hold of the core of the celebrity phenomenon without having to be burdened by unnecessary and superfluous baggage like “skills” or “talent”.
I am officially too old for this shit. However, there’s some underestimating going on here, and I think the cause is old-media chauvinism. Just because these people haven’t risen to massive prominence by the usual method (i.e. television), we oldies consider them not “proper” celebs. But on reflection, of course they are. Most of the tabloid-fodder celebs rose to prominence by being actors, sportspersons or musicians. But actors and players of sports or instruments are ten a penny. The prominent ones -- the “celeb” ones -- got that way with the help of large cadres of publicists, marketers, advisers etc, not to mention people to operate the camera, balance the colour, record and engineer the sound and so on. Youtube “celebs” for the most part do (or at least did at the start) all of that themselves. They produced and engaging product that through word of mouth alone got them a following. If you don’t think skills or talent are required to achieve that I think you may be doing them a disservice. It still baffles me, but I’m about 35 years past being the target market for this sort of thing.