In the past, celebrities were chosen by the public for a particular trait or ability – acting, musicianship, athletics, etc. However, today online communities have made it possible for people to develop their own celebrity through nothing but their own involvement in these communities. For example, Tila Tequila became a celebrity based solely on the number of friends she has on MySpace. After she gained notoriety in the MySpace community, she somehow managed a mediocre modeling/music career and became someone known outside of MySpace. Recently, she landed herself an MTV dating show to make all other dating shows look like Masterpiece Theater. By some unknown reason, the show became inexplicably popular, and viola, Tila Tequila is a real life celebrity for doing absolutely nothing. What?
This same sort of phenomenon is also evident on smaller-scale virtual communities, such as the UVM Facebook server. UVM has its own variation on Tila Tequila: Vanessa Burke. Vanessa Burke is one of those names that is familiar to most UVM students, though most of them have not actually met her. We know her simply because she added us on Facebook. Now there are even Facebook groups devoted to discussing Vanessa Burke.
What is the nature of this form of celebrity? The celebrity is based in a world which is entirely virtual, yet the fame leaks into the real world as well. What does this say about our celebrities, if they can simply create themselves by spending hours adding friends on the computer and then receive a reality show? It seems like we might soon need to reevaluate our concept of celebrity to incorporate these new flexible and individually-controlled notions of celebrity.