“Do You Know Who I Am?”
After the rugby on Saturday I was chatting to one of our clients about the SA blogosphere when she mentioned, quite out of the blue, something about ‘all the influence and importance’ I had. I nearly choked on my beer, as I often do (but not always on beer) when people, with the best intentions, speak about this so-called ‘Weblebrity’ thing a few of us have going in the SA blogosphere. Call it A-listers, Webpreneurs, celebrities (LOL!), whatever – to be honest with you it cracks me up.
It cracks me up because anyone of us so-called Weblebrity‘s who is smart enough to have any sort of profile whatsoever, is also smart enough to know that it means bugger all in the real world. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – if the little bit of recognition we receive for whatever it is we receive it for is enough to make us think we’re important, well that’s a sad joke.
Today the evergreen Cluckhoff tweeted about a post she’d probably picked up on Muti (thanks to Mands of course, who else?) that highlighted this hilarious dynamic for it’s truth. I loved it. Here are 10 Signs You Might Be A “Weblebrity” by David Armano:
1. You have signature clothing such as a certain T-shirt, hat, tie, sunglasses, boas, and occasionally ascots.
2. At internet parties people follow a “drink for link” policy—they buy the drinks, you provide the links.
3. Your internet friends treat you like a star while your real friends tell you to go F@*k yourself.
4. You stopped thinking about yourself as a person years ago. Now you’re a “brand”.
5. At family gatherings you receive regular taunts like “can the internet superstar please pass the casserole??”.
6. You’ve considered getting your Facebook photo shot professionally.
7. Total strangers you meet at conferences know more about you than your significant other.
8. You fight back the urge to say “do you know who I am?” almost daily.
9. People actually think you’re friends with Scoble.
10. No-one in the real world has ever heard of you.
I’m such a nerd. I swear, no lies, I can tick off 8… LOL!
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8 Mike?! That’s sad ;)
HAHA … really enjoyed that. I especially liked the signtature clothing item (thinking of Scott Ginsberg … that name tag guy) and the one where “YOU GUYs” stop being a person and become a brand.
I was going to say that Im so lucky Im not part of that “croud”, but then I thought back to my “Ill never be geek” comment not so long ago.
BTW … “Do you know who I am?” lol
Now then, Mike who-did-you-say-you-were… ;-) As your curmudgeonly old uncle in the grammar business, the plural of Welebrity would obviously be Welebrities. And I hereby declare the collective noun to be a Wobble of Welebrities!
And stop Schmoozing Mandy de Waal. She’s mine, dammit!
#1. Done that. In fact, if I don’t wear my suit, people ask me if I’m sick.
#3. My ‘private’ friends don’t even know what I really do for a living. My ‘business’ friends are all on Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo, etc etc.
#4. Check my blog for this example.
#6. I have.
#7. It’s just a matter of time.
#10. Whaaaaat? You’re kidding, right?
LOL Marcel … on #10 … I guess it depends on what you define as the real world.
#11. You have your name & various spelling variations as search phrases in your http://www.brandseye.com profile.
#11. Done – BIG TIME!
Great post Mike… had a good chuckle.
@marcel – I take it you ticked #11 off too?
I reckon the hypothesis is flawed because interestingly enough internet friends and casual acquaintances and people you don’t even know will tell you to go and fuck yourself online.
And Clive’s right. I belong to him. He created me in some weird experiment using old body parts, elastic bands, tippex, bits of string, some spit, Prestik, part of the Google algorithm and an old dictionary.
12. You use Google to search your name more often than anything else.
13. Your response to most questions is: “Go read what I said about that on my blog.”
14. When your wife asks if you want a second slice of toast you tweet her back on your Blackberry.
15. Your kids call you @Dad.
My Facebook picture IS shot professionally. Is that wrong? I didn’t know there was any other way.