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I feel I am somehow destined to get all meta and analytical on Internet fame. Blogged in high school, studied Communication in college, worked Web 2.0, and survived a little unemployment stint. (Oh fuck that, I still feel unemployed!) Time barely caught on to the self-made Internet celebrity with their “You” [are the Person of the Year] cover in 2007. It was their lamest effort ever, but people still seem to be discovering the truth and value to the self-made Net celebrity, so perhaps it really was timely.

NY Mag has covered “The Microfame Game.”

  • Step No. 1: Self-publish. Their example? Tay Zonday. HMM. Self-publishing. The cheapest step one. And for that reason, none of my future children are going to have computers in their rooms. Or computers with Webcams or microphones, period.
  • Step No. 2: Stylize. This is what marketers and advertisers call “branding.”
  • Step No. 3: Overshare. Oh, JA. Here she is at the premiere of Sex & the City the Movie:

    • julia allison sex and the city

  • Step No. 4: Respond. Look! I’m responding! I will be famous tomorrow, and you can request 8×10 glossies through my soon-to-be-hired personal assistant.
  • Step No. 5: Ally. There was a time when I was e-mailing back and forth with Cory Kennedy’s people. Then again, there was a time when she wasn’t holed away in a Scientologist boarding school. It’s really too bad. We could have launched a reality show. “Inexplicably Famous Crackhead, and the Asian Girl Who Stares at Her in Disbelief.”
  • Step No. 6: Diversify. Tila Tequila’s the focus of this one, because not only did she have a MySpace account, but she also got her music distributed on iTunes. Asian girls, represent…?
  • Step No. 7: Create controversy. I cannot stand looking at PerezHilton.com or his face. Seriously. Skipping this one.
  • Step No. 8: Persist. “While some people quickly fade from public consciousness, another kind of person seems to mysteriously—sometimes frustratingly—persist. Jakob Lodwick called these people fameballs, ‘individuals whose fame snowballs because journalists cover what they think other people want them to cover.’”

And for that commenter who asked, oversharing is this. It’s hard enough working for a company that depends on trends, and getting through those moments where you ask yourself, “Am I selling my soul if I do this?” The hardest part of Internet celebritydom must be coming out of your celebritydom, and realizing what you’ve done. To yourself.

There are entire official organizations devoted to the strategy of word-of-mouth marketing on the Web. There are few people within those organizations, though, who totally “get it,” and even fewer businesses for which it’s going to return stellar results. There are a lot of conditions to control, and even more factors that can’t be managed.

It makes it fascinating to watch “real” people’s grassroots efforts to grow their ventures. Like I mentioned before, before Chictopia, there was Everybody is Ugly, manned solely by Lulu. It was an interesting journey from an outsider’s perspective: Even before Mashable picked up on the venture, girls were flocking to Lulu’s blog, hanging on her every word. As momentum grew for Chictopia’s hard launch (God, what is UP with all the sexual innuendos in Web 2.0? “Hard” launch, “viral” marketing? REALLY?), people could not wait to be part of the insiders’ circle. They requested invites before launch date. They coerced boyfriends into taking backyard photo shoots so they propagate their ChicBlogs. They got excited. They wanted to be early adopters, if not aspiring Lulus.

There is some degree of science to all of this, but what I gather, from what I’ve seen, is this kind of savvy favors the young. It’s about adaptability.

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”
- Anthony Robbins

EDITOR’S NOTE: Seek no “insider” view of Chictopia here. I’m a plugged in Web marketer – I get sent random stuff and I see random stuff (NSFW, that one.) and I sometimes happen to know the people who make those “stuffs.” I sometimes prefer the distance so that I can somewhat objectively rip on shortcomings in graphic design. I’m just observant, and if I kept all my thoughts to myself I would explode.