Famous or Infamous: Is There a Difference? (The Case of Rebecca Black)

17 Apr 2011 . category: . Comments

The internet is an amazing place, but that’s not a point that needs reinforcement. Every day, thousands of bits and bytes circle the globe. Information flows like it never did before. It’s possible for an idea to explode in popularity, gaining for an individual fame and name recognition. Anyone can be a celebrity on the internet.

Is “fame” really the right word for it, though?

Let’s think about people like Alexandra Wallace (UCLA racist rant), Antione Dodson (bed intruder), and Rebecca Black (Friday), and to some extent, Charlie Sheen (winning!). Those are names you probably recognize, but I don’t think you’d want to be any of those people. 

All these people have something in common: they’re known for something that the rest of us would rather not emulate. Whether it’s a rant that shouldn’t have been shared, gratuitous usage of autotune, or a all-around trainwreck just waiting to happen, they serve as something important for the rest of us–a baseline.

This is nothing new–we humans are an insecure bunch. We have this need to know that people other than us have problems in their lives. Want proof of this? Go shop for some groceries every so often. You’ll see examples all over the checkout lane. Tabloids are America’s dirty pleasure, and it’s for good reason. We want to see our celebrities humanized, often brutally so.

In times past, however, there were only two ways to provide such an example. One was to be a figure in the public eye. The other was to be a psychopath or other heinous criminal. There was limited broadcast space, and outfits like tabloids, tv shows, and radio shows wanted to focus on people with context already associated to them. Given the choice between O.J. Simpson and a schmuck across the street, producers and editors would pick the Simpson story since more people knew who he was.

These days, publishers don’t need to consider context, since there’s no scarcity involved in media. There’s no notion of airtime or magazine space on the internet–it can exist as long as someone can post it. Thus, we have a flood of content without context. Coupled with the ability of videos to go viral and memes to explode, a person can gain notoriety without getting famous, first.

The questions about scarcity, noisy media, and a lack of context are interesting, and deserve their own posts. I will leave you, though, with one question.

In today’s world, is there as much difference between being famous and being infamous?

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