After my cousin… whom I didn’t even know reads my blog… had some fascinating comments for me about my Fame, Popularity & Star Power post, I thought I’d try again to explain what I get and don’t get out of posting to the internet.

Revisiting the definitions I used for the article:

Fame = a lot of people have heard of you (clearly relative… “a lot”)
Popularity = a lot of people LIKE something about you
Star Power = a lot of people know what ADDED VALUE you bring to a production

Fame

Now… By those three distinctions, Fame, to me, is absolutely useless. People have heard of your name?… but have no particular interest in, care about or respect for anything you’ve ever done? hehehe No Thanks. :D

There are lots of people that are famous for nothing. People know their names because their parents are rich or because they run around town making scenes or everybody thinks they’re jerks. Still, these people are famous. To many of them, that’s worth something. I’m sure it gets them in the door at some clubs they otherwise wouldn’t be allowed into or it gets them laid a couple of times with groupies that enjoy self-validation through being selected for sex by someone that people think is someone.

I think my lack of interest in fame comes from elementary / junior high school. Growing up in New York City, personalities develop really early. They have to, because you have to fit into your clique(s). It’s not like the sticks, where you can be just anybody, or NOBODY and have the exact same experience in life. In NYC, you like Rock or you don’t. You like Hip-Hop or you don’t. Your parents are rich, or they’re not. You dress cool, or you don’t. You drink and do drugs (yes, in JHS), or you don’t. You’re cool, or you’re not. You’re smart, or you’re not. You’re artistic, or you’re not. You play a cool instrument, or you don’t. You have to work, or you have an ‘allowance’.

I was fortunate that by going to specialized schools, all these kids were thrown in together, because their parents wanted them to be the best in the world. I got to mingle with future movie stars and future gas station attendants. Kids from Park Avenue and kids from the projects. Kids whose parents were already famous and kids whose parents weren’t even born in the USA (hehehe not that that’s a prerequisite for fame hahaha).

What I took away from that was that even if your family’s name rings bells or you throw the best parties or you have the most money or the best girlfriends, that doesn’t make you cooler or more interesting than somebody people haven’t heard of. Since I like cool and interesting people, fame isn’t something that’s important to me… my own, or someone else’s.

My cousin also snapped on the fact that I said I don’t care about this stuff, yet I posted my “recent visitor list”:

hahahaha :D Well… The thing about that is that people don’t hit my site looking for Bill Cammack. People come here looking for concepts that they were contemplating and searched for. Just because someone visited from Australia, looking for information on the dating scene in NYC doesn’t mean that they looked at the author’s name or even gave a damn who wrote the article. So, Yes… :D It’s congruent to say that I’m not interested in fame, and in the next breath mention how people visit my site from all over the world.

I thought of my cousin the other day when I was hanging out and someone I had never met before was raving about a video of mine (that he had no idea I created) that he had watched and enjoyed. I was happy that he enjoyed himself, haha but I never mentioned that *I* was the one that shot and edited that video. Had “fame” been an interest of mine, I would have made sure that he knew that he was speaking to, as well as hanging out having brews with the incredible content creator, Bill Cammack! HAHAHA… How ridiculous is that? Worthless. I was glad that he enjoyed it. I enjoyed that he enjoyed it, and the conversation changed topics without me requesting props from him and propagating my worthless “Fame”. :D

Popularity

Popularity, OTOH, is extremely useful. I can see how I can be accused of using the internet to attempt to gain popularity. It makes sense, because it’s very tough to distinguish between popular people posting THE FACTS about what they do on a regular basis and unpopular people attempting to *become* popular by strategically crafting an internet persona. I can’t help it that I hang out with cool-ass-people ALL THE TIME! :D

It’s not my fault that this is NYC, and there’s ALWAYS something going on. :D

If I happen to get out my camera and document something that’s happening, that’s because….. it’s HAPPENING. :D It’s not something staged for the benefit of the internet population that stumbles onto my site from Google.

Popularity’s built in the trenches… Person to Person. You can be as internet famous as you like, but if you’re a Herb in person, your props go right down the drain. Popularity’s an aura you carry with you… Your ability to make friends on the fly and enjoy people’s company. It’s about the interpersonal relationship you have with the person you’re spending time with right now.

Having said that, the internet affords us all the opportunity to get to know each other asynchronously, and in most cases, anonymously. What people post to the internet is an expression of their own interests, intelligence, fantasies, desires, skills… Where that becomes useful is when someone’s aware of you because of your internet presence and then gets to meet you IRL and find out how close your real life persona is to how you portray yourself through text, images and video.

So… For people that ARE popular, and especially those that have always BEEN popular, the internet isn’t an extremely efficient way to increase that, because the real relationships are built when people actually spend time together… NOT when they’re reading something someone wrote or watching a video they made on the internet.

Star Power

Increasing one’s Star Power via creating and posting content to the internet is really the most valuable takeaway of the three, IMO… other than one’s own satisfaction in creating and being an artist. Since you can create stuff but never post it, we’ll take that out of the running. :) The ability to demonstrate what you do and how well you do it to people around the world, watching it asynchronously, on their own time schedules and when they seek it out themselves via search engines is both immensely powerful and addictive. I had a conversation with Phil Campbell in England and Liz Burr in California about a post I wrote the other day, and I haven’t discussed that post with anyone, IRL. The ability to express one’s self without the limitation of territorial boundaries is exhilarating… even in a text post like this. I also understand that it’s hard to explain to people that aren’t involved in it because *I* didn’t understand it until *I* got involved.

Since Star Power’s based on the added value that *YOU* bring to a project, it’s built regardless of the projects you work on… assuming you’re branding yourself correctly. If you’re the host of the show, you want people to know what your name is, so that if/when you branch off to do another project, people understand the quality you’re going to bring to it. At this point, both Veronica Belmont and Lindsay Campbell have parlayed this concept perfectly, IMO. People are aware of the value that they bring to the table, regardless of which shows they’re fronting. Is it useful and valuable for people in Japan to be aware of the work one does in the USA? Most definitely! :D

So… Out of the three, Fame does nothing for me personally, because it never really touches your life. Popularity’s fun and useful, but it’s something generated AUTHENTICALLY in close quarters, not across the wires and screens of the internet. When you know, feel and understand what REAL popularity is, internet popularity’s relatively worthless, mentally and emotionally. Star Power is great when you want to work with someone else on a project. They know the quality you’re bringing to the table, and can decide whether they want to collaborate with you based on their honest perception of you as a person and your qualifications as an expert in your chosen field.

I post because I enjoy it. If I meet great people IRL because of it, Great! :D If it makes it easier for me to work on video projects that I think are cool and interesting, Great! :D The only other benefit I can think of right now to Internet Fame is that I never carry business cards… I just tell people to Google “Bill“. :D

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It’s always exciting to live in New York City. :) However, right now, one of the exciting things about it is that NYC is a magnet for talent. Whether that’s in web development, music, video production & post… whatever. People that want to be the best at what they do head for NYC. Also, companies that are SEARCHING FOR people who are the best at what they do seek out talent in other places and bring them here.

I’ve been fortunate to hang out with and have convos with some people who have really thought about things in their chosen fields way more than I have, and I enjoy, listening and contributing what I can to the conversation, but mostly learning and expanding my mind and my vision because of my interactions with these progressive friends of mine. There really isn’t enough time in a day to learn everything you want AND to accomplish everything you intended to for the day, so it’s really a privilege to sit down with someone like Bre Pettis or Kenyatta Cheese or Tim Shey (or Bre AND Kenyatta AND Tim, hahaha) and have a heartfelt discussion about the concepts surrounding and supporting the creation and distribution of media on the internet, amongst other things.

Josh, Jen, Tim & Kenyatta

Pertaining specifically to the title of this post, “Fame, Popularity & Star Power”… I had a convo with David Karp a while back that started questions roaming around in my mind and then I hung out with Justin Johnson a couple of days ago that brought this topic back to the forefront for me and gave me a better understanding of what I had wanted to explain to Dave at the time, but couldn’t properly articulate/express at that time.

The convo with Dave was about “Popularity” and the convo with Justin was about “Star Power”.

Justin & Bill

I make a lot of media… More than most people… By a longshot. Mostly, I create videos. I also text blog. When I get things set up the way I want them, I’ll be outputting video daily. Most of my videos have nothing to do with nothing… other than the fact that I felt like making them and I felt like posting them. Like this:

And this:

I was completely unprepared for Dave to bring up “popularity” in reference to my media creation / posting. At the time, I was at a complete loss as far as explaining to him that my blogs / videoblogs aren’t about popularity at all. It was one of the very few times that I hadn’t thought out most of the underlying parameters to something I do, and someone was thinking on a level where they asked me something I couldn’t readily reply to. Another time was when I was battling Annie and her friends and they asked me to define what “acting like a girl” means, hahaha but that’s a different post. :D All I could do was deny wholeheartedly that my media production has ANYTHING to do with popularity, but I couldn’t put my finger on the explanation of why it was not… and I also couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I WAS doing, which would have bolstered my point.

This topic came back to my mind when I was speaking with Justin earlier this week about why people do shows and what they get out of doing those shows. In general, the conversation was about what people might sacrifice to do their craft vs what their takeaways are… the tradeoffs. It was about what people’s visions are for their shows or their characters. It was about what they’re building into their personal brand vs what’s being built into a company’s brand or a sponsor’s brand.

I meant to bring this up in my post about Eye Candy… the typical use of an attractive chick as a front to get guys to click on your content regardless of the actual value of that content. Let’s say you are a front for a show, the “face” of the show. What’s your takeaway from that? How much credit are you given for the success of the show? How much blame is heaped on you for the failure of that show? Are you seen as anything but someone who reads the teleprompter? Are you heralded as a writer? Someone who knows a lot about the technical field you were speaking about on the show? If you leave a show, what’s your takeaway? Do people see you as someone who could host a different show with the same level of success? As you’re doing a show, what are YOU building into YOUR personal brand?

As I thought about my conversations with Dave & Justin, it appeared to me that there are at least three distinctions which appear the same on the surface, but have completely different uses/values. There’s ‘Fame’, ‘Popularity’ and ‘Star Power’. Without consulting Webster’s for the actual definitions…

Fame is when a lot of people have heard of you. Of course, “a lot of people” is a relative term, so I suppose people can be famous within certain circles. There are people who are mega-famous within the Videoblogging or Web 2.0 echo chambers, but if you ask the average joe/josephine on the street, they’ve never heard of these people. Also, you can be famous without being popular, like when people have heard your name but don’t actually give a damn about anything you ever said or did. To a degree, I think you can be famous without having any star power at all… but I guess that depends on the definition of ‘Star Power’. :D

Popularity is when a lot of people like something about you or something that you did. People are inclined to listen to what you have to say or pay attention to a project because you’re attached to it. This is why I say one can be famous without being popular. Just because someone’s heard of you doesn’t mean that they’re going to click on your video or email the link to their friends or link to your post in their social bookmarks. Then again, I guess that’s a Web 2.0 definition, hahaha. In the real world, popularity means you can rally troops, even though you’re not famous and people wouldn’t expect you to have the reach that you do.

I’m calling ‘Star Power’ the ability to bring added value to a production. People know your track record. People know your accomplishments in your chosen field. People know that your skills are transferrable from whatever you were working on previously to whatever you’re working on now. They know that when you’re involved, something worthwhile’s going to happen.

Depending on what your goals are in life, any of the three could be of use to you or preferable to you. You might want a lot of people to hear your name, but you don’t really care what they think about you (Fame). You might want a lot of people to think highly of you, but you’re not concerned with accolades or having people outside of your circle know “who you are” and what you do (Popularity). You might want to be known as someone who makes it happen and is an invaluable addition to any project… yet, you’re not interested in people outside of your field being aware of you, and certainly not the general public just knowing what your name is for no apparent reason (Star Power).

Having said all that, and congratulations to you if you’re still reading this, :)…

What I would have said to David on that day if I had understood the situation at the time, is that I wouldn’t post media to the internet to attempt to create popularity. This is because… I *AM* popular. I’ve been popular since my first recorded memory. I was popular in Kindergarten, Elementary School, High School and College. Most likely, I’ll be DEAD before I become unpopular, or just plain not-popular. This is because popularity is based on who you are as a person and how people react to you. I make new friends, literally, every time I go to an event. I look on the “definite” list of large, local facebook events, and typically, the first two pages, if not three (30 people) are populated with people I’ve had good times with IRL. So, being the type of person that generates his own popularity on the fly, in real-time, posting videos or text to the internet is not something I would do in order to “be popular” or “become popular”.

I don’t post for fame either, because to me, fame is worth way less than popularity. I get hits from around the world to BillCammack.com. Do I appreciate that? Yes. :) Does it do anything for me in my everyday life? No.

What I value from my stats is when they indicate someone I have a REAL relationship to. I’m happy when I see a marker for England that represents Phil Campbell or Hawaii that represents Rox & Shane or Philly that represents Banannie or PurpleCar or Drew Olanoff. But this isn’t “fame”. It’s an indication that your friends have visited your site. I consider it “reach”, that friends of mine in Japan or France are watching my videos or reading my blog posts. But, no. I don’t post for fame, either.

I’m sure this seems strange to people as well, since I don’t carry business cards, but inform people that I’m top 20 on google for the world “Bill” :D (currently top 10, hehe).

This leaves ‘Star Power’. I would admit that I post to a degree for Star Power. Being that I’m an American, bred to dominate, genetically, being 3rd generation William C. Cammack and raised on “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie & Chevrolet”, I get a kick out of doing things that other people can’t do, and, to a degree, “showing off”. Part of my attraction to the internet is that your work is always available and perpetually available. People are watching videos I posted to the net over a year ago. Meanwhile, I’ve done pieces for television that were watched ONE TIME and then never seen again (news). Even commercials that I’ve done that ran for years on network television came on “whenever”. There was no “on demand” way to view projects that I’ve worked on. Once Athina Krikeli showed me how crisp video was playing on the iPod, I knew what I had to do. I knew that my self-expression through video needed to be transferred to the internet and iTunes and however people might want to check it out.

At the same time that I’m enjoying myself by making and posting videos, I’m enhancing and advertising my own personal brand. However, that’s just the point that I wanted to make, but wasn’t able to at the time. I post because I want to. It’s something I do for *ME*, and not anybody else. Granted, I love and respect my “core fans” and I hope they enjoy the videos I create, but, ultimately, if I weren’t doing it for myself, I wouldn’t do it at all.

Fame, Popularity and Star Power are all external to one’s self. None of that’s interesting to me, personally. I know people who operate like that. They do shows BECAUSE they want people to watch them. They go out with chicks BECAUSE other guys think they’re attractive and consider them playboys because of it. I enjoy the fact that the internet allows people who would never have met you before to experience you asynchronously, at their own pace and to their own level of interest. The only area where it actually affects me is when I make new friends because of it and we get to share our lives together.

So, for me, Fame means nothing, Popularity is as common for me as walking or breathing, and Star Power gets me work or new clients, which has to do with money, but has nothing to do with what’s really valuable in this life.

Why do you post?

Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem
Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme

~Rush

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