by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarer
I’ve written about this before, but I’m bored and tipsy and I find the subject fascinating. What interests me is celebrity interaction with people who write (or whatever) about them online.
My general assumption is celebrities are too busy doing “dope shit” in the real world to worry about what any one person is saying about them online. However, as I’ve written before, I suspect there is a spectrum of celebrity awareness.
On one end there are celebrities who are so famous and so busy with having a Real World Life that they have no idea what any particular random blogger or Twitter user might be saying about them. They have people for that, as they say. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum are those celebrities who are — no matter how big they are — so insecure that they troll Twitter using burner accounts, etc.
I really am a nobody. I may be pretty interesting, but I’m living in oblivion and there’s no reason any celebrity would have any interest in me whatsoever. The only notable exception to this general living-in-oblivion happened when I was living in Seoul.
I’ve written about all of this before, but, in general what happened is way back when, in the Before Times, I had a strange affinity for picking on the then-New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee and her strange byline. Now, being much older, I doubt I would care at all that she went by “8.” as a middle name. So what.
But this was a different era of the Internet and I was in Seoul, so when she visited South Korea while working on a book, I find myself having dinner with she and her friend Tomoko. (Who worked for the Asian Wall Street Journal, if remember correctly.)
The thing about Tomoko is she was a stereotypical Blue Check Liberal (well before those were a thing) to the point that she, right in front of me, went on at great length about how people who taught English in South Korea (that would be me) were, essentially the fucking scum of the Earth. I don’t think it registered at the time to her what she was saying and who she was saying it to.
But, lulz.
Anyway, I’m much older and much wiser now. It takes a lot to get me excited when it comes to celebrities. I check my Webstats obsessively and occasionally I’ll write some random thing about this or that celebrity and someone from NYC or LA will look at it and I pause and wonder if it’s someone connected to the celebrity I wrote about.
Now that I’m older, I’m very blasé about catching the attention of a celebrity. I just don’t care. Live long and prosper, guys. One day I believe — in my heart at least, that I’m going to be a celebrity.
You never know. It could happen. I am writing a novel, you know.
