Simon’s Blog

Forbes has put together its list of the twenty five most popular Internet “celebrities” (see The Web Celeb 25). What’s interesting about this is just how shallow the pool of Internet celebrities seems to be: most of these people really are nobodies. That’s not an insult to the individuals involved. I just mean: not many people will know who the hell any of these so-called celebs are.

Now, I consider myself reasonably well up on all matters Internet, and pretty well up on the culture of celebrity; and even I don’t know most of these people. I know six of the top ten, but only two in the rest of the list by name (a few more if I see their photos/what they’ve done on the Net).

My conclusion is: there really aren’t many web celebs at all. Furthermore, the people on the Forbes list that I have heard of don’t qualify as celebs in my book; with the possible exception of Jessica Lee Rose. And even then, I would say that she’s not a celebrity yet.

But, maybe all this is a good thing. Perhaps we don’t want these people to get too famous. After all, the world probably isn’t quite ready for pictures of Scoble that are like the photos of Britney we’ve had to endure recently