Celebrities, Real People, Fakers and the Future
Monday, June 8th, 2009Twitter’s announcement yesterday that they will soon be cracking down on fake celebrity accounts brings to mind Andy Warhol’s quote, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”.
I’ve thought for a while now that the lines between people and celebrities are blurring; my friend Liz Strauss likes to say that “People and stars are made of the same stuff”. There are many indications that this macro trend will continue, as reality television and internet-enabled celebrity continue to grow in popularity and reach. We’ll see ordinary people become famous, people become famous for being famous and watch with schadenfreude as the famous burn out and become ordinary again.
While some of this endless fascination is voyeuristic (the famous take risks that we would like to, but cannot), much of it is also aspirational. Our sister company, Virtual Greats, is pursuing the idea that ordinary people, in virtual worlds, games and social networks, will enjoy appropriating traits of identities of famous people. Second Life, City of Heroes and Twitter celebrities prove out this central hypothesis in a “destination-based way” — the team at Virtual Greats is now taking the elements of known brands or famous identities and equipping the denizens of many worlds with them.
Will it work? Who knows, but I’m guessing that the rush that comes when Trick or Treating as a hero or operating a fake Shaquille O’Neal Twitter account is universal. Only time will tell.
