If you worry that young social networkers, videographers, or bloggers in your life are fixated on fame, it might help to give them the story of 18-year-old YouTube star “Emmalina” in the Sydney Morning Herald. “The chatty video blog entries recorded from her bedroom first began to appear in the ‘most viewed’ rankings … in June and some of her more controversial posts attracted more than 300,000 views…. Her spectacular rise to Internet fame gave rise to a multitude of YouTube dedications, spin-offs and spoofs, as well as a rap song dedicated to her popularity.” But she’s now an ex-YouTube star. She quit. She deleted her profile and all her videos from the site because, along with the fame and adulation came “cruel spoofs, harassing videos, death and rape threats, [and] incredibly nasty comments,” she told the Morning Herald. People also hacked into her computer and stole private photos, videos, and information and posted them online. Meanwhile, there’s another YouTube star who turned out to be more virtual than real. You’ll see what I mean by that in the New York Times’s “The Lonelygirl that Really Wasn’t.” In a piece published before she was “outed,” the Los Angeles Times looked at the “conspiracy theories” Lonelygirl15 fueled – with insights into 21st-century marketing.
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