You have just read a book on internet celebrity in a time that can be considered both the Golden Age and the Dark Age of the industry.
For starters, the internet celebrity and Influencer industries are at their most institutionalized, structured, regulated, and organized today, having been honed through various cultural iterations since the mid-2000s. An increasing number of young people are skillfully parlaying their internet fame into full-fledged viable careers, such that dozens of them around the world have become internet-made millionaires. The promise of possibly becoming an internet celebrity, for whatever rhyme or reason, seems a lot more attainable than it was a decade ago. As genres of weird and quirky content on the internet continue to diversify and celebrities emerge out of internet culture for newer (and more unpinnable, random) reasons, it feels as if the culture of internet celebrity is here to stay for a long time to come.
Yet, I have also written this text at a time where the President of one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world is pushing out highly sensational and viral tweets by the day, accumulating more global publicity for his internet celebrity than his presidential duties. Vernacular reactions to the often unprofessional content tweeted by this President are also swiftly garnering fame for many internet users themselves, as they continuously innovate in the ways they appropriate and remix his content for humor and attention, resulting in a shadow economy of competition for visibility and virality with every tweet. The Influencer industry has been plagued by onslaughts of controversies in the last few years, as questions of authenticity, transparency, and sincerity on the internet have been called into question every time a new scandal has erupted. One of my favorite television series, Black Mirror, has just launched its fourth season to terrify international audiences with more dark consequences as social media has irrefutably fused with the basic needs of contemporary life.
As such, I write this book as a time capsule bearing snapshots of what the climate of internet celebrity looks like at this point of its trajectory, in the late 2010s. As I eagerly watch cultures of internet celebrity take root, take off, take over, or take flight around the world, I hope that you, like me, will treasure having had this opportunity to grow up and grow old with the internet as it continues to grow on us.