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INTERNET CELEBRITY
Understanding Fame
Online
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“A succulent collection of up to date and incisive contri-
butions to the field of global micro-celebrity. It offers an
impressive array of new ideas and arguments to help us to
understand and research one of the characteristic develop-
ments of our time.”
Chris Rojek,
Professor of Sociology,
City, University of London

“Crystal Abidin has produced a most useful book. It brings

our understanding of internet celebrity right up to date, and
does so with an exemplary attention to its proliferating diver-
sity of form, content, structure and location.”
Graeme Turner,
University of Queensland
INTERNET CELEBRITY
Understanding Fame
Online

BY

CRYSTAL ABIDIN
Jönköping University, Sweden

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India

Malaysia – China
Emerald Publishing Limited
Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

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mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without
either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence
permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright
Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance
Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of
information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements.
The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily
those of the Author or the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library

ISBN: 978-1-78756-079-6 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-076-5 (Online)
ISBN: 978-1-78756-078-9 (Epub)
 To Carissa:
For growing up with me on the internet,
And growing old with me in my heart.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have chanced upon the rare luck of being mentored by some

of the most intelligent, generous, and caring academics in my
field. While there are too many to name here in this book,
I would like to thank especially Theresa M. Senft for being
an ever critical and mentoring intellectual champion of my
research as I build on her milestone work on microcelebrity.
Special thanks to my colleagues Annette Markham and
Katrin Tiidenberg who first suggested that I write this book one
glorious evening in July 2017, as we lounged over fancy, home-
cooked feasts on the coziest rooftop in Aarhus.
Portions of this work were presented at various conferenc-
es and seminars, during which I have had the opportunity to
field thought-provoking Q&As. While there have been several
such events, I would like especially to thank the organizers and
attendees of the Affective Politics of Social Media conference at
the University of Turku; the Association of Internet Research-
ers conference 2017 in Tartu; the Australian and New Zealand
Communication Association conference 2017 at the University
of Sydney; the Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT) semi-
nar series at Curtin University; the Digitizing Early Childhood
International Conference in Perth; and the Digital Living Sum-
mer School Programme at Aarhus University.
I wrote this text in the months during which I was a Post-
doctoral Fellow at the Media Management and Transforma-
tion Centre (MMTC) at Jönköping University, and Adjunct

ix
x Acknowledgements

Research Fellow at the Centre for Culture and Technology

(CCAT) at Curtin University. I am grateful for the support
and care of my colleagues at both institutions and would
like to thank Leona Achtenhagen, Ingrid Aronsson, Barbara
Eklöf, Mart Ots, and Emilia Florin Samuelsson from the
MMTC, and Emma de Francisco, John Hartley, Tama Leaver,
and Lucy Montgomery from the CCAT.
At Emerald Publishing, I am indebted to Jen McCall who
first commissioned this text, Rachel Ward for managing
the tiresome administrative work, and Sarah Broadley for
expertly laboring over marketing the book. I thank also the
anonymous reviewers for giving their critical feedback on my
work, and the leading scholars in celebrity studies who have
generously provided expert blurbs.
The beautiful line sketches were provided by LIBA Studio, to
whom I express my admiration of their creativity and my gratitude
for their expertise. I would also like to acknowledge Jill Walker
Rettberg from whom I adapted this innovative imaging method.
Several ideas and case studies throughout the book were
adapted from posts on my academic blog wishcrys.com, on
which I write about developments in the world of internet
celebrities and vernacular social media cultures. For this, I am
thankful to anyone who has ever read, shared, or commented
on my running streams of consciousness (affectionately known
as ‘brainfarts’ to my readers) on any of my blogs since 2008.
On social media, I crowdsourced examples of everyone’s
favorite internet snippet, artifact, icon, or personality to consider
a cultural variety of case studies for this book. Thank you to
everyone who responded to me. It was a wild experience learn-
ing about your guilty pleasures on the internet ヽ(o＾▽＾o)ノ.
To some of my most favorite peers in my work life: Kath
Albury, Megan Lindsay Brown, Paul Byron, Jocelyn Cleghorn,
Stefanie Duguay, Sara Ekberg, Natalie Hendry, Tim Highfield,
Jenny Kennedy, Liew Kai Khiun, Maki Mayer, Kristian Møller,
Acknowledgements xi

Natalie Pang, Brady Robards, Gabriele de Seta, Sander Schwartz,

Tan Shao Han, Katrin Tiidenberg, Son Vivienne, Katie Warfield,
and Meg Zeng, thank you for nourishing academia (and my life)
with your hearts and your brains ⊂(´• ω •`⊂).
To my people at home: Char+Nick, Jo+Jon, Wei+Joe,
thank you for growing old with me <3.
To my person, Sherm: Thank you for being such a wonder-
fully weird human being. May we ever be blessed with high-
speed internet in our home.
And finally, to you, the reader: Thank you for picking up
this book. Happy rabbit-holing. Long live the internet.
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrationsxv

Prefacexix

1. What is an Internet Celebrity Anyway? 1

2. Qualities of Internet Celebrity 19

3. Internet Celebrity and Traditional Media 37

4. From Internet Celebrities to Influencers 71

Postface99

Endnotes101

Further Reading151

Index157

xiii
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TABLES

Table 1.1 Structural differences between  16

microcelebrity and internet
celebrity.
Table 3.1 Value flows between internet  68
celebrity and traditional media for
each type of internet celebrity.

FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Artist’s impression of a typical  21

“Rich Kids of Instagram” post,
featuring a woman clad in a
bikini lying on a yacht at sea.
Figure 2.2 Artist’s impression of Kinoshita  24
Yuka’s typical mukbang spread,
sitting behind a table full of plates
of food.
Figure 2.3 Artist’s impression of Sungha  29
Jung playing his guitar on
YouTube.

xv
xvi List of Illustrations

Figure 2.4 Artist’s impression of Ms Yeah  31

cooking dishes with office
equipment, such as using a blow
dryer and coffee pot.
Figure 2.5 Artist’s impression of “Naptime  34
With Joey” in a typical costume.
Figure 3.1 Artist’s impression of Michelle  39
Dobyne’s memefied facial
expression.
Figure 3.2 Artist’s impression of “Ridiculously  46
Photogenic Guy,” smiling into
the camera while running a marathon.
Figure 3.3 Artist’s impression of “Success Kid,”  49
eating sand with a clenched fist on
the beach.
Figure 3.4 Artist’s impression of the viral  53
meme image featuring Heidi Yeh,
a husband, and three young children.
Figure 3.5 Artist’s impression of Sophia  58
Grace & Rosie performing on
The Ellen DeGeneres Show while
clad in their iconic tutu skirts and
princess tiaras.
Figure 3.6 Artist’s impression of MunahHirziOfficial, 62
who are known for performing in drag.
Figure 4.1 Artist’s impression of the front  73
page of a typical blogshop, featuring
young women modeling various clothes.
Figure 4.2 Artist’s impression of the landing page  77
of a typical Influencer’s blog, featuring
static banner ads in the header and
side bars.
List of Illustrations xvii

Figure 4.3 Artist’s impression of a live-streaming  90

session in progress, featuring live
comments and an assortment of emoji
and tokens of appreciation streaming
in from viewers.
Figure 4.4 Artist’s impression of the backend  97
page of a Snapchat profile, featuring
metrics such as number of screenshots
and number of views.
 PREFACE

It has been ten years since the first scholarly book on celebrity
on the internet was published. Global studies scholar The-
resa Senft’s Camgirls (2008) was a groundbreaking ethnog-
raphy that traced the practices of young American women
who acquired internet fame by broadcasting their personal
lives via webcams in their bedrooms. Since then, the structure,
nature, and culture of internet celebrity has evolved drasti-
cally around the world.
As digital technology has advanced, and social media
platforms have instituted new forms of interpersonal com-
munication, internet fame appears to have become increas-
ingly accessible and practiced by or bestowed upon ordinary
people from all walks of life. In tandem with this, develop-
ments among traditional celebrities and public figures, such
as the proliferation of traditional Hollywood-esque celebri-
ties turning to social media to communicate with fans, or pol-
iticians taking to social media to cultivate a willing citizenry,
also evidence the enduring importance of social media as a
mainstream communication tool. Further, amidst the rush for
legacy media to move into digital estates to wrestle against
their dwindling print media readership, and the rise of the
gig economy in which young people are turning to web-based
publishing and self-curated content for an income, newer
forms of internet celebrity are entangling with and innovat-
ing away from older media formats.

xix
xx Preface

In response, this book presents an updated, bird’s-eye view

of what contemporary internet celebrity and fame online
look like. Case studies survey how internet fame is facilitated
by the most popular English-language social media platforms
today, such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, Twit-
ter, and YouTube. However, given that much of the academic
research on celebrity culture has thus far been focused on the
Global North, and drawing on my research focus on East
Asian internet cultures, the case studies discussed were inten-
tionally sampled to include key examples from China, Japan,
Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, alongside examples
from Australia, England, Sweden, and the USA.
A brief note on terminology: While there exists decades
of research into the evolution of media industries, from the
earliest days of broadcast radio and television, to cross-media
formats such as newspapers and print magazines, to contem-
porary digital formats such as websites and social media,
throughout this book I use “traditional media” as a short-
hand for these legacy media formats that are generally highly
institutionalized, gatekept, hierarchical, and authoritative in
the production and circulation of content, as opposed to the
more accessible, reciprocal, interactive, open, and democratic
uses of “social media.”
The accessible language and diverse array of case studies in
this book cater to a variety of readers. Students and scholars
will find the review of current literature and concepts useful;
keen followers of the Influencer scene and people who work
in the industry will enjoy the spread of key issues highlighted
for discussion; and casual readers who might just like to learn
a bit more about internet celebrity will understand how this
culture has impacted our contemporary society.
It is my hope that everyone who picks up this book will
acquire a valuable insight into internet celebrity culture,
beyond the populist claim that these are merely frivolous,
Preface xxi

vain, or meaningless practices on the internet. Indeed,

one of my key scholarly ethics is the belief in “subversive
frivolity,” wherein practices or objects that are usually
brushed off or discarded as marginal, inconsequential,
and unproductive hold generative power that is underesti-
mated and under-visibilized because they thrive just under
the radar.
In fact, while the notions of “internet” and “celebrity”
may immediately bring to mind visualizations of being loud
and proud, the impacts of internet celebrity culture are often
counterintuitively taking root deeply, slowly but surely, and
in quiet confidence, in all aspects of society such as econom-
ics, legality, culture, and social issues. As cultures of inter-
net celebrity continue to bloom around the world, the ideas
and frameworks in this book will provide provocations and
insights for understanding how fame is generated, circulated,
sustained, consumed, or rejected on the internet on a global
scale.
Finally, a humble request: If you have enjoyed this book,
I would love to hear from you. It is always an anxious exer-
cise putting ideas into words, words onto paper, and paper
into book form for the world to see. It would be a roman-
tic experiment to watch this little book roam across places
akin to the folklore of the traveling garden gnome, so please
allow me to trace this journey through digital postcards, i.e.
photographs of this text “in the wild.” Are you a curious pas-
serby reading it from the comfort of a cosy couch? Are you
a student reading it for a class? Are you an internet celebrity
reading it between social media updates? Send me photo-
graphs from where you are reading this book (plus points for
selfies); drop me a message about what you felt (I’m not dif-
ficult to locate on the internet); and enchant me with stories
about your favorite internet celebrities and artifacts from
your part of the world (links!) – I would love to learn more
xxii Preface

about the quirky rabbit hole of internet celebrity from your

part of the internet.
Alternatively, feel free to drop me falling penguin GIFs,
Pusheen stickers, or videos of babies tasting lemons for the
first time, now that you know where I live on the internet.

Yours,
Crystal Abidin aka wishcrys.
 1

WHAT IS AN INTERNET
CELEBRITY ANYWAY?

In the 2010s, dominant press coverage and conversations

around internet celebrity have focused on just one par-
ticular type of celebrity: The Influencer. Influencers are the
epitome of internet celebrities, given that they make a living
from being celebrities native to and on the internet. Several
news reports have been celebrating the success and promise
of young Influencers, such as Australian Troye Sivan whose
home videos on YouTube eventually grew into a singing con-
tract with EMI Australia, an acting career in Hollywood,
and being named by Time Magazine as one of the world’s
25 most influential teenagers of 2014. Still other reports
focus on the shortcomings and scandals of the relatively
new Influencer industry, such as when British YouTuber Zoe
Sugg, who broke records for being the fastest selling debut
novelist, shifting over 78,000 copies in a week in 2014, was
exposed for having used a ghostwriter. But internet celebrity
is a far broader concept with a much longer history than that
of Influencers.

1
2 Internet Celebrity

A BRIEF HISTORY OF INTERNET CELEBRITY

There are many theoretical and vernacular accounts of the

history of internet fame. But how internet celebrity has come
to emerge in various parts of the world varies, depending on
the cultural norms of the people, the social practices around
media devices and personalities, and the structure of tech-
nological capabilities that mediate a population’s access to
content. While every effort has been made to consider the
diverse cultural variety of internet celebrity around the globe,
through in-depth case studies throughout the book, this
section focuses on a brief history of internet celebrity that
happens to be primarily Anglocentric. This is a result of key
scholarship in celebrity studies having been published in the
English language and focused on media formats that have
been popularized in North American, the United Kingdom,
and Australia. As such, the conversation does not comprehen-
sively cover the various cultural and platformed histories of
internet celebrities.
For instance, the system of celebrity media in Japan dis-
tinguishes “mainstream celebrities” in the traditional media
industries, such as actors, musicians, and models, from
“idols” who are systemically manufactured to serve as cute
icons and role models, and from “tarento” (タレント) who
are recurring personalities on various media and are literally
“famous for being famous” without having any other attrib-
utes of the entertainment industry. This means that the broad
English translation of “internet celebrity” cannot accurately
account for the historical, structural, and cultural nuances of
distinct types of celebrity in Japan alone. In another instance,
in China the vernacular term for internet celebrities is
“wanghong” (网红), which translates to “red on the internet”
with the color red signifying popularity, and broadly refers
to highly prolific internet users who are effective conduits for
What Is An Internet Celebrity Anyway? 3

channeling online retail businesses or social media advertising.

In other words, these users are assigned celebrity status not
for any variety of demonstrable talent, but for their specific
ability to attract attention on the internet within the vast
ecology of Chinese users. Unlike the connotations of being
a “content creator” in the Anglocentric parts of the world, a
wanghong is premised on the acute ability to convert internet
viewer traffic to money, relying less on content production
than the ability to hold an audience’s attention visually. This
means that even where the brushstrokes of internet celeb-
rity translations may heed to some cultural specificities, the
benchmark and characteristics of being an internet celebrity
can also vary drastically across ecologies. As such, given that
it is impossible to provide a comprehensive overview of the
cultural and structural histories of internet celebrity around
the world, this section will instead focus on a theoretical his-
tory of internet celebrity. Giving a brief overview of some of
the most important scholarship on celebrity culture, we will
go through key ideas that have informed the emergence of
celebrities in the age of the internet.

Traditional Celebrities

For most people, the mere mention of the word “celebrity”

invokes a visual image of a glamorous Hollywood actor,
probably strutting down the red carpet at award ceremonies.
Or perhaps you imagine a pop singer performing live on stage
to thousands of enthusiastic fans raving in a mosh pit. For
others, celebrities can also be internationally known public
figures who are prolific for their social status, such as the for-
mer President of the USA Barack Obama. Regardless, in the
traditional or legacy media industries of cinema, television,
radio, music, and print, we have tended to associate the idea
4 Internet Celebrity

of celebrity to an achievement, talent, or position. But being

a celebrity in the sense of having fame or being well known is
not always tied to these rational and tangible sources.
Research by eminent celebrity studies scholar Graeme
Turner1 shows us that even if some celebrities are first para-
chuted into the limelight through their achievements, talents,
or positions, many of them continue to attract public atten-
tion for durations way past the initial instigation, even if they
do not continue to commit to or demonstrate their initial
sources of fame. This occurs, for instance, when the media
starts to report on the private lives of cinema and television
actors, musicians, or politicians, even if these affairs are not
directly connected to the skills or positions that first made
them publicly famous.2 Considering this, Turner3 argues that
when the public begins to take an interest in a person for their
personal lives and identities per se, rather than for what they
have done, they are no longer merely public figures but have
become bona fide celebrities with public personae. This tells
us that although celebrity is traditionally thought of as an
innate quality gifted to extraordinary people, contemporary
celebrity culture has shifted to focus on people and things
that are usually constructed, can be transient, are usually
sensational, and often visually based, in tandem with tabloid
culture. In other words, the quality of celebrity does not natu-
rally attach to or arise from specific people but is constructed
through a process.4
The construction of celebrity is supported by intentional
media coverage on a person, that turns them into a com-
modity, where the public is massaged to take interest in them
continually. Cultural studies scholars like Chris Rojek5 have
also theorized about celebrity and fame as products of the
mass media that specifically highlight a person, attribute
special qualities to them, and frame them as being worthy
of our attention. Scholars who have studied the industry of
What Is An Internet Celebrity Anyway? 5

creating celebrities have found that it is a networked busi-

ness comprising entertainment, communications, public-
ity, representation, appearance, coaching, and endorsement
specialists,6 and it is facilitated with specialized jobs such
as managers, agents, publicists, promoters, and magazine
editors.7

Ordinar y People as Celebrities

Since celebrities can be groomed by experts in the traditional

media industry, logically speaking, any ordinary, everyday per-
son can be groomed into celebritydom irrespective of wheth-
er they have extraordinary achievements, talented skills, or
prominent positions in society. As media formats evolved and
television genres diversified, ordinary people were increas-
ingly attaining flash fame as guests on talk shows. Specifi-
cally, confessional formats like The Jerry Springer Show and
intervention formats like Dr. Phil, where ordinary people
are thrust into the spotlight to have their private lives and
personal issues turned into public spectacles and commercial
subjects, saw the proliferation of fame being attached to the
“lived experience of ‘the ordinary’ ”8, which Turner terms the
“demotic turn.”
However, what is an “ordinary” life anyway? Sociologist
of popular culture Laura Grindstaff9 contends that “ordi-
nary” does not signpost content as being “average,” “typical,”
or “representative of the population in general,” but rather
merely conveys that they are not experts or celebrities and
are famous for assorted reasons. This includes having first-
hand experience of a significant incident or being willing to
divulge something attention-worthy from their private lives.
Furthermore, as ordinary people are less filtered and orches-
trated than traditional celebrities who have been trained
6 Internet Celebrity

in deportment and impression management, it is expected

that ordinary people on television are more likely to display
intense human emotions in response to specific incidents. This
is a moment that Grindstaff10 terms “the money shot.” These
highly lifelike displays of emotions range across the spectrum,
from happiness and grief to anger and regret, and the audi-
ence’s ability to identify with these emotions on-screen con-
tributes to feelings that ordinary celebrities are more real and
authentic than traditional celebrities.
However, just because there has been an increasing pres-
ence of ordinary lives on display does not mean that any
ordinary person can be famous for merely publicizing their
everyday lives. Fame only attaches to particular forms of
everyday life that captivate an audience. Thus, despite the
demotic turn, the traditional celebrity industry is not neces-
sarily more democratic because not everyone has an equal
opportunity to attain fame11. Ultimately, the television
industry, like all media industries, relies on public interest
and viewership for sustainability, and what attracts atten-
tion is entertainment value. In the demotic turn, seemingly
authentic and dedicated representations of everyday life “as
lived” are but a calculated production of entertainment in
the guise of democratic access, and celebrity in the tradi-
tional media industries remains hierarchical, exclusive, and
gatekept.12
Therefore, are there any benefits to the rise of ordinary
people and their lives being broadcast on traditional media
formats as new forms of celebrity? Scholars argue that there
may be several useful outcomes. Broadcasting and celebritiz-
ing ordinary lives in traditional media allow viewers to learn
and critically assess what is real and what is constructed in the
media.13 It can teach viewers to self-brand14 and can persuade
viewers to practice more reflection and empathy by identify-
ing with other people’s stories in a practice that visual media
What Is An Internet Celebrity Anyway? 7

scholar Craig Batty15 has called “emotioneering.” However,

despite these apparent benefits, putting ordinary people and
their lives on display to reap commercial profits for television
stations in exchange for short-lived fame is not a fair game.
Such commodification of private lives disproportionately
benefits producers and traditional media.

Reality TV Celebrities

As ordinary people and their ordinary lives become increas-

ingly proliferated and lucrative in the traditional media
industry, the genre that profits the most from this demotic
turn is reality TV. Media scholar Annette Hill16 writes that
reality TV is a form of “popular factual television” where real
people perform in (at least) partially staged settings. How-
ever, viewers are not passively absorbing and accepting reality
TV content just because of its promise of legitimacy derived
from having ordinary people as actors. Instead, they hold the
expectation that reality TV programming involves a degree
of dramatization, sensationalism, and editing of actual expe-
riences, in exchange for being more entertaining. In other
words, Hill argues that viewers engage in different forms of
viewing strategies to gauge the authenticity of these narra-
tives against their contextual knowledge that popular fac-
tual television is particularly performative. Some audiences
are more critical toward the truth claims of such programs,
while others rely on the belief that all artifice will eventually
be exposed.
But what is so special about the format of reality televi-
sion? Will reality cinema bear the same fruits and expecta-
tions? Media scholars Laurie Ouellette and James Hay17
argue that as a medium, television is “more in sync with the
rhythms of everyday life than other media,” especially since
8 Internet Celebrity

it is a ­constantly accessible and consistent mode of enter-

tainment that is available for both “casual observation” and
“appointment viewing.” As such, television has more power
to normalize some social practices and identities as being
more accessible, common, and traditional. It is for this reason
that the products and services embedded into reality TV pro-
grams, especially those of the body makeover genre, tend to
be more persuasive forms of advertising for the viewer, since
they blur the boundaries between what is merely entertaining
content and what is a commercial message.

Celebrity–Audience Relations

In the earlier sections, we learnt that celebrities do not exist as

a matter of fact but are constructed through strategic practic-
es, often with the help of expertise from the traditional media
industry. We also learnt that both traditional celebrities and
ordinary celebrities on talk shows and reality TV have some
sort of captivating power that secures the attention and inter-
est of an audience, at least for a period of time. Clearly, there
are relationships being fostered between celebrities and their
audiences.
One of the most studied relationships between celebri-
ties and their audiences is that of “parasocial relations,” a
concept cultivated by psychologists Donald Horton and
R.­Richard Wohl18 to describe how popular characters on tel-
evision and radio can instigate the development of one-sided
interpersonal relationships with individual members of their
audience based on an illusion of intimacy. In the early days
of mass media formats, pre-internet and pre-social media,
these feelings of intimacy were fostered through television
and radio hosts’ informal conversational styles of casualness
and responsive small talk, the projection of supporting cast
What Is An Internet Celebrity Anyway? 9

members as close friends, mingling with the audience, and the

use of technical devices such as close-ups or voice control to
appear more friendly, close, and intimate with audiences. The
result of such broadcasts is that the audience accumulates
extensive knowledge of the television or radio personality,
feels as if they are intimate friends, and continues to invest in
following their media productions.
Yet the audience never actually experiences any reciproc-
ity from the hosts, who know nothing of their idiosyncra-
sies. In other words, communication and content only flow
from the traditional media hosts to their audience, and there
is little opportunity for the latter to respond or personally
interact with their hosts across the communication barrier. To
understand these mediated forms of intimacy better, Rojek19
differentiates between “first order intimacy” where feelings
of closeness are cultivated through direct meetings and first-
hand experiences, and “second order intimacy” where feel-
ings of closeness are artificially stimulated by techniques of
the mass media. However, these celebrity–audience relations
have changed drastically in the age of digital media.

DIY Celebrity

In tandem with the increasing use of digital technology and

social media platforms as sites for circulating personal con-
tent, users—whether celebrities, celebrity-wannabes, or audi-
ences—were able to bypass typical corporate layers and
structures previously pertinent to manufacturing fame and
celebrity. The ability to produce and post “homemade con-
tent,” so to speak, and the likelihood of this content circu-
lating widely on the internet, independent of the traditional
media industries ushered in a new form of ordinary person
celebrity that Turner20 calls the “DIY celebrity.” With the new
10 Internet Celebrity

democratizing tools of digital media, celebrity aspirants could

earn public attention by publicizing themselves to various
interest communities. The DIY celebrity template was com-
prehensible to and approachable for everyday users with little
technical knowledge about attaining fame, because all that
they had to do was emulate traditional modes of celebrity
production in social media-based adaptations.
Focusing specifically on this new ability for internet users
to self-brand and learn to promote themselves to a public,
new media scholar P. David Marshall21 identifies a transi-
tion from “representational” to “presentational” media
and culture. Before the age of digital media and self-curated
content, users could only hope to have their identities and
cultures characterized by traditional media actors in broad-
cast media as “representations.” In the age of digital media
and DIY content, users are now able to broadcast, con-
trol, and negotiate how they would like their identities and
cultures to be perceived as intentional “presentations” of
the self.
As self-presentation on digital media became more accessi-
ble, professor of television and digital culture James Bennett22
observed that such DIY celebrities and aspirants increasingly
pursued fame that more resembled the old-school, traditional
media models of celebrity, based on achievements, skills, or
positions as discussed earlier. The chief implication of this
is that despite the new possibilities and promises of emerg-
ing types of celebrity in the age of digital media, many DIY
celebrities still tended to borrow from the practices of tra-
ditional entertainment industries.23 As a result, several digi-
tal media scholars—such as Jean Burgess and Joshua Green
who studied early YouTube culture,24 and Alice Marwick and
danah boyd who studied celebrity culture on Twitter25—have
argued that ordinary people’s success at attaining fame and
celebrity still becomes subject to the benchmarks and logics
What Is An Internet Celebrity Anyway? 11

of ­traditional media. In the earliest days of Web 2.0, blogs

were the primary platform on which DIY celebrities on the
internet could fashion themselves. However, when webcams
became popular for everyday use in the late 1990s, the era of
“camgirls” that mirrored reality TV celebrities ushered in a
new form of celebrity.

Microcelebrity

One of the earliest extended academic studies of bedroom

webcamming behavior was conducted by global studies
scholar Theresa Senft,26 who investigated a generation of
camgirls and their audiences between 2000 and 2004. These
camgirls were knowingly broadcasting themselves to the pub-
lic on the internet while attempting to accumulate fame. Senft
describes this form of celebrity pursuit as “micro-celebrity,”
where users employ digital media technologies and platforms
to garner popularity by performing on the internet.27 Their
main strategies include cultivating a public image of them-
selves as a brand and interacting with viewers through emo-
tional labor.28
Using camgirls as a vehicle for understanding this new form
of celebrity, Senft argued that microcelebrities on the internet
were unlike celebrities in the traditional entertainment indus-
tries on several counts29—where traditional celebrities prac-
tice a sense of separation and distance from their audiences,
microcelebrities have their popularity premised on feelings
of connection and interactive responsiveness with their audi-
ences; where traditional celebrities may be known for their
performance craft and skills, microcelebrities are expected
to display themselves unedited as “real” people with “real”
issues; and where traditional celebrities may have exten-
sive fame among a large global audience, microcelebrities
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
some great attempt, and set down her failure to the account of her
sins. She instantly declared that she would atone for the latter,
provided her desires were accomplished, by finding a pilgrim who
would go from France to Jerusalem, on foot, and who at every three
steps he advanced should go back one. The wished-for success was
achieved, and after some difficulty a pilgrim was found, strong
enough, and sufficiently persevering to perform the pilgrimage. The
royal pledge was redeemed, and there only remained to reward the
pilgrim, who was a soldier from the neighborhood of Viterbo. Some
say he was a merchant; but merchant or soldier, Catherine knighted,
ennobled, and enriched him. His arms were a cross and a branch of
palm tree. We are not told if he had a motto. It, at all events, could
not have been nulla vestigia retrorsum. They who affirm that the
pilgrim was a merchant, declare that his descendants lost their
nobility by falling again into commercial ways—a course which was
considered very derogatory, and indeed, degrading, in those
exclusive days.
I may mention here that Heraldry has, after all, very unfairly treated
many of the doers of great deeds. No person below the degree of a
knight could bear a cognizance of his own. Thus, many a squire may
have outdone his master in bravery; and indeed, many a simple
soldier may have done the same, but the memory of it could not go
down to posterity, because the valiant actor was not noble enough to
be worthy of distinction. In our English army, much the same rule still
obtains. Illustrious incompetence is rewarded with “orders,” but plain
John Smith, who has captured a gun with his own hands, receives a
couple of sovereigns, which only enable him to degrade himself by
getting drunk with his friends. Our heraldic writers approve of this
dainty way of conferring distinctions. An anonymous author of a work
on Heraldry and Chivalry, published at Worcester “sixty years since,”
says—“We must consider that had heraldry distributed its honors
indiscriminately, and with too lavish a hand, making no distinction
between gentry and plebeians, the glory of arms would have been
lost, and their lustre less refulgent.”
But it is clear that the rule which allowed none to bear cognizance
who was not of the rank of a knight, was sometimes infringed. Thus,
when Edward the Black Prince made the stout Sir James Audley, his
own especial knight, with an annuity of five hundred marks, for
gallant services at Poictiers, Audley divided the annuity among his
four squires, Delves, Dutton, Foulthurst, and Hawkeston, and also
gave them permission to wear his own achievements, in memory of
the way in which they had kept at his side on the bloody day of
Poictiers.
The fashion of different families wearing the same devices had,
however, its inconveniences. Thus, it happened that at this very
battle of Poictiers, or a little before it, Sir John Chandos reconnoitring
the French army, fell in with the Seigneur de Clerment, who was
reconnoitring the English army. Each saw that the device on the
upper vestment of his adversary was the same as his own, blue
worked with rays of gold round the border. They each fell to sharp,
and not very courteous words. The French lord at length remarked
that Sir John’s claim to wear the device was just like “the boastings
of you English. You can not invent anything new,” added the angry
French knight, “but when you stumble on a pretty novelty, you
forthwith appropriate it.” After more angry words they separated,
vowing that in next day’s fight, they would make good all their
assertions.
As the general rule was, that squires could not bear a cognizance,
so also was it a rule that knights should only fight with their equals.

For knights are bound to feel no blows

From paltry and unequal foes;
Who, when they slash and cut to pieces,
Do all with civilest addresses.

It is in allusion to this rule that Don Quixote says to Sancho Panza:

“Friend Sancho, for the future, whenever thou perceivest us to be
any way abused by such inferior fellows, thou art not to expect that I
should offer to draw my sword against them; for I will not do it in the
least; no, do thou then draw and chastise them as thou thinkest fit;
but if any knight come to take their part, then will I be sure to step in
between thee and danger.”
Knights, as I have said, have had honor conferred on them for very
strange reasons, in many countries, but in none for slighter reasons,
perhaps, than in France. We may probably except Belgium; for there
is a living knight there, who obtained his order of chivalry for his
pleasant little exhibition of gallantry in furnishing new-laid eggs every
morning at the late queen’s table, when every hen but his, in the
suburban village of Laecken had ceased to lay!
Dumas, in his “Salvandire,” satirically illustrates how knights were
occasionally made in the days of Louis XIV. The hero of that dashing
romance finds himself a captive in the prison of Fort l’Evêque; and
as the king will not grant him permission to leave, he resolves to
leave without permission. He makes the attempt by night, descends
from the window in the dark, is caught by the thigh on a spike, and is
ultimately carried to a cell and a bed within his prison-walls. The
following day the governor waits upon him, and questions him upon
the motives for his dangerous enterprise. The good governor’s
curiosity is founded solely on his anxiety to elicit from the prisoner,
that the desire of the latter to escape was not caused by his
dissatisfaction with any of the prison arrangements, whether of
discipline or diet. The captive signs a certificate to that effect, adding,
that his sole motive for endeavoring to set himself free, was because
he had never done anything to deserve that he should be put under
restraint. A few days after, the governor announces to the recluse
that the certificate of the latter has had an excellent effect. Roger
supposes that it has gained him his liberty; but the governor
complacently remarks that it has done better than that, and that the
king, in acknowledgment of the strict character of the governor’s
surveillance, has created him chevalier of the order of St. Louis. If all
the prisoners had succeeded in escaping, as nearly as Roger, the
governor would probably have been made Knight of the Holy Ghost!
The king of France had many such faithful servants; but history
affords many examples of a truer fidelity than this; particularly the old
romances and legendary history—examples of faithfulness even
after death; but, though there may be many more romantic in those
chronicles, I doubt if there is any one so touching as the proof of
fidelity which a knighted civilian, Sir Thomas Meautis, gave of his
affection for Lord Bacon, to whom that ancient servant of the great
lawyer, erected a monument at his own cost. Hamond Lestrange
relates a curious incident, to show that these two were not divided
even after death. “Sir Thomas,” says Lestrange, “was not nearer to
him living than dead; for this Sir Thomas ending his life about a
score of years after, it was his lot to be inhumed so near his lord’s
sepulchre, that in the forming of his grave, part of the viscount’s body
was exposed to view; which being espied by a doctor of physic, he
demanded the head to be given to him; and did most shamefully
disport himself with that skull which was somewhile the continent of
so vast treasures of knowledge.”
Other knights have been celebrated for other qualities. Thus, Sir
Julius Cæsar never heard Bishop Hackett preach without sending
him a piece of money. Indeed, the good knight never heard any
preacher deliver a sermon without sending him money, a pair of
gloves, or some other little gift. He was unwilling, he said, to hear the
Word of God, gratis.
Other knights have cared less to benefit preachers, than to set up for
makers or explainers of doctrines themselves. Thus the Chevalier
Ramsay held that Adam and Eve begot the entire human race in
Paradise, the members of which fell with their procreators; and in
this way the chevalier found in an intelligible form “the great, ancient,
and luminous doctrine of our co-existence with our first parents.” The
Chevalier deemed that in teaching such doctrine he was rearing
plants for a new Paradise; but he was not half so usefully engaged
as some brother knights who were practically engaged as planters.
We may cite Sir John St. Aubyn, who introduced plane-trees into
Cornwall in 1723; and Sir Anthony Ashley, the Dorchester knight,
who enjoys the reputation of having introduced cabbages into
England about the middle of the sixteenth century.
In contrast with these useful knights, the person of the once famous
Chevalier de Lorenzi seems to rise before me, and of him I will now
add a few words, by way of conclusion to my miscellaneous volume.
It is perhaps the tritest of platitudes to say that men are distinguished
by various qualities; but it is among the strangest if not most novel of
paradoxes, that the same man should be remarkable for
endowments of the most opposite quality. The eccentric knight
whose name and title I have given above, is, however, an illustration
of the fact; namely, that a man may be at once stupid and witty. It
was chiefly for his stupidity that Lorenzi was famous, a stupidity
which excited laughter. I must, nevertheless, say in behalf of the
brother of the once celebrated minister of France at the Court of
Florence, in the days of Louis XV., that his stupidity so often looks
like wit, as to induce the belief that it was a humor too refined for his
hearers to appreciate.
Acute as Grimm was, he seems to have undervalued the chevalier in
this respect. That literary minister-plenipotentiary of the Duke of
Saxe Gotha could only see in the chevalier the most extraordinary of
originals. He acknowledges, at the same time, Lorenzi’s high feeling
of honor, and his frank and gentle spirit. The chevalier was crammed
with scientific knowledge, but so confusedly that, according to
Grimm, he could never explain himself in an intelligible way, or
without exciting shouts of laughter on the part of his hearers.
Madame de Geoffrin, when comparing the chevalier with the
ungraceful M. de Burigny, said that the latter was awkward in body,
but that Lorenzi was awkward in mind. As the latter never spoke
without, at least, an air of profound reflection, and had therewith a
piquant Florentine accent, his mistakes were more relished. I do not
think much of his misapprehension when introduced, at Lyons, to M.
de la Michaudière, in whose company he dined, at the residence of
the commandant of the city. The gentleman was addressed by an old
acquaintance as Le Michaudière, and Lorenzi, mistaking this for
L’Ami Chaudière, persisted in calling the dignified official by the
appellation of Monsieur Chaudière, which, to the proud intendant of
Lyons, must have been as bad as if the chevalier had certified that
the intendant’s father was a brazier.
He was far more happy, whether by chance or design, I can not say,
at a subsequent supper at M. de la Michaudière’s house. At the table
sat M. le Normant, husband of Madame de Pompadour, then at the
height of her brilliant infamy. Lorenzi hearing from a neighbor, in
reply to an inquiry, that the gentleman was the consort of the lady in
question, forthwith addressed him as Monsieur de Pompadour,
which was as severe an infliction as husband so situated could well
have endured.
This honorable chevalier was clearly not a religious man—but
among knights and other distinguished personages in France, and
elsewhere, at the period of which I am treating, the two terms were
perfectly distinct, and had no necessary connection. Accordingly, a
lady who had called on Lorenzi one Sunday morning, before eleven
o’clock, proposed, at the end of their conversation, to go with him to
mass. “Do they still celebrate mass?” asked the chevalier, with an air
of astonishment. As he had not attended mass for fifteen years,
Grimm gravely asserts that the Florentine imagined that it was no
longer celebrated. “The more,” adds the epistolary baron, “that as he
never went out before two o’clock, he no longer recollected that he
had seen a church-door open.”
The chevalier, who was Knight of the Order of St. Stephen of
Tuscany, and who had withdrawn from the French Army, with the
rank of colonel, after the conquest of Minorca, had a great devotion
toward the abstract sciences. He studied geometry and astronomy,
and had the habit, says Grimm, to measure the events of life, and
reduce them to geometrical value. As he was thoughtful, he more
frequently, when addressed, made reply to abstruse questionings of
his own brain than to persons who spoke to him. Grimm, after saying
that the Knight of St. Stephen was only struck by the true or false
side of a question, and never by its pleasant or amusing aspect,
illustrates his saying by an anecdote, in which many persons will fail
to find any remarkable point. Grimm encountered him at Madame
Geoffrin’s, after his return from a tour in Italy. “I saw him embroiling
his senses with the genealogies of two ladies in whose society he
passes his life, and who bear the same name, although they are of
distinct families. Madame Geoffrin endeavored to draw him from
these genealogical snares, observing to him:—‘Really, chevalier, you
are in your dotage. It is worse than ever.’ ‘Madame,’ answered the
chevalier, ‘life is so short!’” Grimm thought he should have done rank
injustice to posterity if he had not recorded this reply for the benefit
of future students of laconic wit. And again:—Grimm shows us the
chevalier walking with Monsieur de St. Lambert toward Versailles.
On the way, the latter asked him his age. “I am sixty,” said the knight.
“I did not think you so old,” rejoined his friend. “Well,” replied the
chevalier, “when I say sixty, I am not indeed quite so old, just yet; but
—” “But how old are you then, in reality?” asked his companion.
“Fifty-five, exactly; but why may I not be allowed to accustom myself
to change my age every year, as I do my shirt?”
One day, he was praising the figure of a lady, but instead of saying
that she had the form of a nymph, he said that her shape was like
that of Mademoiselle Allard. “Oh!” cried Grimm, “you are not lucky,
chevalier, in your comparison. Mademoiselle Allard may be
deservedly eulogized for many qualities, but nobody ever thought of
praising her shape.” “Likely enough,” said Lorenzi, “for I do not know,
nor, indeed, have I ever seen her; but as everybody talks about
Mademoiselle Allard, I thought I might talk about her too.”
If there was satire in this it was not of so neat a quality as that
exhibited by him at Madame Greffon’s, where he was spending an
evening with Grimm and D’Alembert. The last two were seated, and
conversing. Lorenzi stood behind them, with his back to the
chimney-piece, and scarcely able to hold up his head, so overcome
was he by a desire to sleep. “Chevalier,” said Grimm, “you must find
our conversation a horrid bore, since you fall asleep when you are
on your legs.” “Oh, no!” exclaimed the chevalier, “you see I go to
sleep when I like.” The naïveté with which he insinuated that he liked
to go to sleep rather than listen to the small talk of a wit and a
philosopher, was expressed with a delicious delicacy.
Of his non-sequential remarks Grimm supplies several. He was once
speaking disparagingly of M. de St. Lambert’s knowledge of chess.
“You forget,” said the latter, “that I gained fifteen louis to your thirty
sous, during our campaign in Minorca.” “Oh, ay,” answered the
knight, “but that was toward the end of the siege!”
It was at this siege that he used to go to the trenches with his
astronomical instruments, to make observations. He one day
returned to his quarters without his instruments, having left them all
in the trenches. “They will certainly be stolen,” said a friend. “That
can’t be,” said Lorenzi, “for I left my watch with them.”
And yet this “distraught” knight was the cause, remote cause, of the
death of Admiral Byng. He discovered, by mere chance, in his
quarters at Minorca, a book of signals as used by the English fleet.
He hastened with it to the Prince de Beaubeau, who, in his turn,
hastened to place it before the Marshal de Richelieu. The
commanders could scarcely believe in their good fortune, but when
the naval combat commenced it was seen that the English observed
this system of signals exactly. With this knowledge it was easy to
anticipate all their manœuvres, and they were obliged to withdraw
with disgrace, which Byng was made to expiate by his death. The
chevalier never thought of asking for a reward, and his government
entirely forgot to give him one.
When about to accompany M. de Mirepoix, who was appointed
embassador to London, he packed up his own things and that so
perfectly that it was not till he had sent them off that he discovered
he had left himself nothing to travel in but the shirt and robe-de-
chambre which he wore while employed in thus disposing of the rest
of his wardrobe.
He lived in a small apartment at the Luxembourg, as persons of like
rank and small means reside in the royal palace at Hampton Court.
One day, on descending the staircase he slipped, and broke his
nose. On looking round for the cause of his accident, he observed a
whitish fluid on the steps; and, calling the porter, he rated him
soundly for allowing this soapy water to remain on the staircase. “It is
barley water,” said the porter, “which a waiter from the café spilled as
he carried it along.” “Oh! if that be the case,” replied the chevalier, in
a mild tone, and with his hand up to his mutilated nose, “if that be the
case, it is I who am in the wrong.”
Grimm adds, in summing up his character, that he was richer in
pocket handkerchiefs than any other man. As his apartment was just
under the roof of the palace, and that he, almost every day on going
out, forgot to take a handkerchief with him, he found it less trouble to
buy a new than to ascend to his room and procure an old one.
Accordingly, a mercer in his neighborhood had a fresh handkerchief
ready for him every day.
The history of eccentric knights would make a volume of itself. Here,
therefore, I will conclude, grateful to the readers who may have
honored me by perusing any portion of the miscellaneous pages
which I have devoted to illustrations of chivalry, and, adding a remark
of Johnson, who says, touching the respect paid to those who bear
arms, that “The naval and military professions have the dignity of
danger, and that mankind reverence those who have got over fear,
which is so general a weakness.”

THE END.
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Men of the Time, or Sketches of Living

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Lorenzo Benoni; or, Passages in the Life of

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Classic and Historic Portraits. By James

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Tom Moore’s Suppressed Letters. Notes

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Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres; or,

Reminiscences of a Merchant’s Life. By Vincent Nolte.
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Men and Women of the Eighteenth Century.

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Philosophers and Actresses. By Arsene

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Life of the Honorable William H. Seward, with

Selections from his Works. Edited by George E. Baker. 12mo, cloth.
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The History of Texas, from its Settlement in

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The History of Louisiana—Spanish

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The Life of P. T. Barnum, written by himself;

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A Memorial of Horatio Greenough, consisting

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Minnesota and its Resources; to which are

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The Private Life of an Eastern King. By a

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Doran’s Queens of England. The Queens of

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VOYAGES AND TRAVELS.

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Cosas de España. (Strange Things of

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A Month in England. By Henry T.

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Sicily, a Pilgrimage, by Henry T. Tuckerman,

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A Tennessean Abroad; or, Letters from

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Life in the Mission, the Camp, and the

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The Russian Shores of the Black Sea, with a

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A Year with the Turks; or, Sketches of Travel

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White, Red, and Black. Sketches of

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The Blackwater Chronicle: A Narrative of an

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SCIENCE AND ART.

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Bronchitis, and Kindred Diseases. In

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Bodenhamer on the Diseases of the Rectum.

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Comparative Physiognomy; or,

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Episodes of Insect Life. By Acheta

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Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, from the

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The Night-Side of Nature; or, Ghosts and

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Art and Industry, as represented in the

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Chapman’s American Drawing-Book. The

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The History and Poetry of Finger-Rings. By

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BELLES-LETTRES.
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The Partisan; A Romance of the Revolution.

12mo, cloth. Price $1 25.
Mellichampe; A Legend of the Santee. 12mo,
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Southward, Ho! a Spell of Sunshine. By Wm.

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The Noctes Ambrosianæ. By Professor
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The Odoherty Papers; forming the first

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The Shakespeare Papers, and the Homeric

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Dr. Maginn. Edited by Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie. [In Press.]

Bits of Blarney. By Dr. R. Shelton

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