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The Pressures of Celebrity
In this new medium of web video, democracy has given fame to unsuspecting users. Those who are chosen, either by the quality and content of their videos or by some inexplicable snowball effect in member viewership, have acquired sudden celebrity status.
By celebrity, I mean both a person who is recognizable by the mainstream populous and a member of an independent culture who is worthy of public attention.
I have been fortunate enough to work with many wonderful film and television actors who spent years in the public eye, often becoming isolated by their own celebrity. I have seen how difficult it is to walk the crowded streets and not be noticed as the cover girl on the latest issue of Vogue or that guy on that TV show. The amount of people in this nation who recognize musical or theatrical achievements can be overwhelming and the crowds, smothering.
But what if you are not a highly-paid, public figure but rather a “normal” citizen who has fallen into such fame? When you do not have publicists to filter the harsh comments or managers to formulate an effective strategy? This is now the case with several mainstream vloggers and YouTube celebrities. As I have mentioned in a previous post, Boh3m3 had his Flicker of Vulnerability, where he doubted the purpose and ultimate outcome of his YouTube popularity. And now LucyinLA has fallen into visible disarray over of the harsh nature of some user comments.
The unexpected pressures of web celebrity, as well as the emotional effects of user-to-user involvement associated with the new medium, is evident in LucyinLA’s most recent post. “Nothing to Hide” is a two-part conference piece that runs for a combined total of 19 minutes. In this first segment Lucy admits to the legal name of Laura and explains to viewers her purpose. While holding back tears of frustration, she and cameraman Kareem, “set the record straight”.
The video session continues in Part Two.
I am interested in the thoughts and observations of the video community in regards to this topic. Please comment with your ideas on Lucy’s new video and web celebrity.
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The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://www.thedailyreel.com/news-opinion/blogs/the-daily-feed/archive/2006/09/25/the-pressures-of-celebrity/trackbackTHE HEIR APPARENT!
She's an attractive 25 year old who's profile reads "I am in love with a guy but he doesn't even know i exist. The story of my life. Sux but true."
At least this girl is such a bad actress that I doubt many of her nearly 1400 subscribers (#3 most subscribed channel this week) actually believe she's real unless they've been living in a cave and never heard of lonelygirl15 or LUCYinLA.
THE PRESSURES OF CELEBRITY?
This is a story about truth, honesty, what is real and what isn't.
Several days ago the truth about LUCYinLA came out after a week or so of speculation in light of the LonelyGirl15 revelation.
Initially messages and video's began appearing on YouTube with cryptic messages asking LUCY to come clean with her fans. LUCY's response to these stories and video's was a video entitled "LUCYinLA / Meet My Family" at the beginning of which she pinches her arm and states "I'm real, I am real" and continues with footage of a trip to see her family so we the viewer can see how real she is.
This didn't have the desired effect apparently, it simply angered those who eventually exposed her as someone quite different from the LUCY character she had been playing.
It turns out that LUCY was actually Laura Segura who while actually an actress living in L.A. was not working for a temp agency, is actually a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, and the stories she told, which were characterized as current events were not, though she does claim they are actual experiences from her life.
The video's which were supposed to have taken place in an office where she was working as a temp were actually filmed in her Director/Cameraman/Editor's office and her website which included pictures as well as her resume was taken down less than a week before her first video appeared on YouTube. Draw your own conclusion or not about the reason for that.
Apparently due to the harassment she was receiving from fans who say their motivation was that they were upset by the deception, she felt it necessary to respond with the two part video mentioned in the "pressures of celebrity" article.
In those video's she and her cameraman confirm all of these things but still insist that despite that "they are real". At one point or another they blame "psychos" and "freaks" for their problems and then say that "haters" hate them "because they are real".
Other YouTube "celebs" with many more subscribers who don't hide who they are or where they live such as Geriatric1927 renetto or FilthyWhore (sorry but that's her profile name) among others haven't had any problems with people that have required them to respond with tearful video's and these are people who never anticipated celebrity or sought it the way Laura has, it would seem that she would have foreseen and reconciled this as a possible consequence of seeking to be a "star" in Hollywood. Maybe the difference between them and her is she is just so real, at least in her mind.
I don't know that Laura should be blamed for not understanding what is real and what isn't she does after all live in a world where the line between them is very often blurred. They do after all call Hollywood "The Land of Make Believe".