Bill Cammack » talent

Famous For Nothing [Fame, Part 3]

Bill Cammack — Sat, 29 May 2010 13:04:31 +0000

Two years ago, in May 2008, I wrote “Fame, Popularity & Star Power” and then “Fame (Part 2)” two weeks apart from each other. The main point was that I was trying to figure out how to articulate my thoughts about fame in order to respond to an opinion my friend Dave had expressed about why I do what I do.

I never actually figured out how to exactly articulate the difference between what I’ve done for basically my entire life and what a lot of people do now. Today.. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I ended up watching a video where someone interviewed Melyssa Ford.

Melyssa was saying something about something… and then she goes “Fame used to be the by-product of success and now it’s the ultimate goal”. A few seconds later, I rewound it and listened to that line again and was like “HOLY ****!!!!! :D That’s EXACTLY The Point I Was TRYING To Make!!! :D”

Fame vs. Popularity

I’m not famous.. Though a lot of people will say that I’m MicroFamous or Internet Famous. I’ve been ranked inside the top 15 Google results for “Bill” (out of currently 377 million results) since February, 2008 (2 years and counting). I’m also inside the top 30 results (out of 264,000,000) for “Bill” on bing.com. I’ve been blogging for years, and BillCammack.com is currently serving 5,000 pages per week, according to Quantcast & Google Analytics.

Whatever infinitesimal amount of Fame, Popularity, Star Power or Personal Brand Recognition I currently enjoy is, as Melyssa would say, a by-product of my success. It’s a fringe benefit. It’s icing on a cake. It’s certainly not THE POINT of anything I do and it’s certainly not *WHY* I do anything I do.

When I post a video of something I did or somewhere I went..

It’s not so you or anyone else can go “OOOOOOOHH! Look at what Bill did! :O”.. It’s because I. ALREADY. DID. IT. and I’m trying to share an incredibly small percentage of my real life experiences with whomever might be interested. If I stopped filming things, I’d STILL be doing a bunch of cool stuff with a bunch of cool people. If I stopped blogging, I’d still be hanging out with a bunch of chicks and enjoying myself. I’m not performing or doing anything that’s out of the ordinary for me. I’m just trying to share so you have a SLIIIIIIGHT idea of what my life is like.

Sharing

Even that last sentence seems to be braggadocio. Who the **** cares what *MY* life is like? :D

Well… All I can say about that is that back in the day my friend Dan McVicar (a.k.a. Clarke Garrison on “The Bold and the Beautiful”) created and hosted a Social Media site called “The Late Nite Mash”.

My friend Marty Daniels, whom I met through Dan’s site, lived somewhere in the sticks where I was never going to visit and filmed a video while walking around at a county fair in his local area.

Was the video exciting and action-packed? Nope! :D However.. I got to experience something I never would have experienced, being that a) I wasn’t going to ever travel there to go to that fair, and b) it was being filmed through Marty’s “eyes” and experiences, so it was necessarily different from what would have happened if I had been there filming with my own camera.

I got value out of that, which I obviously remember to this day, so my goal in sharing is to attempt to pass that on to people that don’t live in NYC or don’t live in the USA at all or experience this city in a completely different way than I do.

Also, I get correspondence and blog comments from people that watch my videos or read my blog posts and got something out of it. TO ME… That’s what it’s ALL about… Sharing. Messages In Bottles. I send out the communication. If you received it, good. If you got something out of it, even better! :D

I couldn’t give a damn about serving 5,000 pages a week. I’m way more motivated by the 50 people that are currently subscribed to my blog by email. Thanks, y’all! :D I see youse out there! ;)

I’m also motivated by and thankful for my set of regular commenters, including recently Steve, Frank, Christine, Gail, C-Jay, Albert, Sophia, BM, Elly, Michele and even Fishingrod, who’s been SLACKIN’ lately, but I know she still loves me! :D

To Me.. It’s all about the communication. I post and output media in order to share, with you. If I stopped doing it, the events of my life would continue as they always have.. I’d just have more time to do them instead of taking time out to write long-ass blog posts like this one. :)

Fameballing

Going back to Melyssa’s point.. Now that so many people have access to expressing themselves via Social Media, a lot of them are doing what they can TO become famous, which has become an END instead of a BY-PRODUCT. The question for them is “What can I do to get more Twitter followers? O_o What can I do to get more Facebook friends? How do I get people to consider me a Fameball?

People want people to follow them… They want *ANYONE* to follow them. They just like how it FEELS to be followed. It doesn’t matter what they have to do or how bad they make themselves look so long as someone new subscribes to their channel or RSS feed.

This is the difference I was trying to explain to Dave, but failed until now. I’ve been popular since my earliest memory I still have available to me, around 5 years old, in kindergarten. I have *ALWAYS* had crews my entire life. I’m currently Facebook friends with guys and gals I knew in Elementary School, JHS, High School, College and from work & social environments after I graduated.

I meet new people every single time I go to an event, which is several times a week here in NYC. I’m popular FOR REAL, as a by-product of who I am as a person. I’m successful in business FOR REAL, as a by-product of how I conduct myself when I work for clients and their passing that information on via word of mouth so new prospective clients call or email *ME* asking if I can work for them, not the other way around.

This is exactly the explanation I was looking for, so Thank You, Melyssa Ford! :D

Who are you, again?

Lots of people these days are putting the cart before the horse. They want to be famous, but there’s no reason why they should be. They want to have successful blogs, but they don’t write ANYTHING ORIGINAL. They want people to follow them so they can enjoy the sensation of people seeming to give a flying **** about anything they ever thought about.

To me, that’s completely empty and worthless, which is why I’m finally getting to put this topic to rest two years later. I’m popular because I’m supposed to be.

Anywhere you put me, I’m going to make new friends & acquaintances. I’m MicroFamous because of who I am and what I do… EVERY DAY.

I did it yesterday, I’ve been doing it for years, and I’m gonna do it again today because being popular is natural to me and not something I hope to be, wish I was or would like to convince other people that I am.

I just spent a couple of hours writing this post because it’s worth it to me. I get my own kicks out of it, my email subscribers are going to receive it a few hours from now. My RSS subscribers are going to receive it right after I press “Publish”. Eventually, I’ll run into someone that will mention this post to me f2f, IRL and then I’ll be fascinated, amazed and appreciative that the current wonders of technology afford me the privilege of speaking to whomever feels like listening to, watching or reading my content.

So now I’m fully self-expressed on this topic. :D I’m fully prepared to explain to someone why I’m different from people who output content to get attention and collect followers, yet whom under careful inspection are clearly exposed to be attention-whores and who are, in reality… Famous For Nothing.

Conversion of “Cred”

Bill Cammack — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:56:24 +0000

For a couple of months, I billed myself as a “Social Media Expert”, which I am. :D

I removed that title because in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t say anything specific or useful about me. It was mostly “Keeping up with the Joneses”. I would look at people billing themselves as SMEs and go “um… if THAT PERSON’S an expert, I’m FOR DAMNED SURE an expert!” hahahaha :D

I stopped thinking about it a long time ago, but today, I read an interesting article by Jeremy Pepper, entitled “Taking Stock – Can Social Media Do What It Claims?” that’s briefly rekindled my interest in the topic. Amongst some other interesting things, Jeremy writes:

“JP: … While people are glomming onto social media, there seems to be very little being done in the circular nature of the social media consultants.

You don’t hear/read about campaigns that are helping change the world. You don’t hear/read about campaigns that are being done with the large agencies or consultants that are trying to help make the world a better place.

You read social media people talking about social media … and that seems to be it. It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy of Valleywag’s 250. And, I have written about this before, and nothing much changes.”

Jeremy then goes on to name a few Echo Chamber Bigwigs and he gives some suggestions for useful things they might do with their massive numbers of followers on various social media sites.

As I looked at his list and what he was suggesting that these people do, I was reminded of my post from four months ago, entitled “Content / Production Value / Popularity”. As a content creator, I’ve been very interested in how people acquire followings and what they utilize their fan base for. By March 2008, when I wrote C/Pv/P it was clear to me “what’s going on around here”. :D

And, yes…. This is getting back to the point of what this has to do with Jeremy’s post. :D

What’s going on around here is that people are trying to sell stuff. Period. There are two ways to do this, but they end up at the same destination. The first way is to create content that people like and enjoy and pass on to their friends, who then become viewers and hopefully PASSIONATE viewers and carry the flag for you to their towns, cities and countries all over the world. If you look at the videos from when DiggNation came to NYC and there were lines all up, down and around the block of nothing but excited FANS, FANS, and more FANS, that’s a prime example.

The other way to “sell stuff” is to base your show or site around someone that comes with a pre-fab fan base. If you don’t understand this, it’s often confusing when you see people with LESS TALENT brought on board when there are people with obviously WAY MORE TALENT available for the project. For instance, let’s say someone’s a way better musician/producer than I am, but they don’t have any social media props. If you put the two of us up for the same project (read “selling stuff” inside the Echo Chamber), you can either HOPE that people will like his/her music, and it will catch on, OR you can go with what you know, which is that I currently have 993 Twitter followers, 734 Facebook “friends”, 636 Myspace friends, etc, etc, and Google loves to Nom Nom on everything that I do, so you can find me at the top of the search results for Bill (#5 of 388,000,000), NYC dating (#7 of 309,000), video editor resume (#2 of 802,000) and Emmy Award Editor (#1 for my resume and #2 for my Indy Mogul episode, out of 612,000 English pages).

So when you look at it for what it is, what counts inside the Echo Chamber (aka the Fishbowl) is “reach”, or perhaps how much of a built-in marketing machine the person brings to the table and *NOT*…. I repeat… *NOT* their ability to make anything that remotely resembles a professionally produced or edited video. You do NOT have to have ANY talent as an on-air personality… you have to have a fan base. You do NOT have to have a track record of well-done videos… you have to have a fan base. You do NOT have to look good COUGHunlessyou’reafemaleCOUGH… you have to have a fan base.

This is one of the reasons the term “famous for nothing” is tossed around so much. If you ask “do you know XYZ?” or “have you heard of XYZ”, the answer will be “yes”. If you ask what that person does, you’ll see perplexed facial expressions and the scratching of heads. :D Basically, these people are popular NOW, and unless you were around back in the day when they initially developed their fan base, you can’t figure out WHY anybody would care what they said about ANYTHING outside of whatever their ultra-narrow niche of expertise is…. whatever that might be. This leads me to my point about Jeremy’s article…

There is a difference between the ability to attract attention and the ability to influence those whose attention you’ve attracted.

Lindsey Chen and I dropped a post two days ago, and two hours after I pressed “publish”, the visitor map for that one article looked like this:

Map for Top 10 Mistakes Guys Make When Trying To Get A Girl

What this means is that we wrote something that people were interested in reading.
What this does NOT mean is that we have any influence over anyone who read it.

Is it POSSIBLE that people might listen to what we have to say on topics other than dating? Yes. However, the fact that we have X amount of “eyeballs” doesn’t necessarily translate to the ability to mobilize ANY of those people in the direction of a cause. This is what makes it seem like social media is full of hot air. :D

What we’re developing is “cred”. The important question is “what area/field are we developing ‘cred’ IN?” If you’re famous for asking people questions, why should anyone care what YOU have to say? If you’re famous for being attractive… why should anyone care what YOU have to say? If you’re famous because your parents are famous? If you’re famous because you did a cool video one time? If you’re famous because you have a lot of subscribers or video views on YouTube?

Who cares?

That’s what happens when people aren’t following you for YOU, and they’re following you because of what they’re getting out of following you. If you get advance information about gadgets, people are going to follow you… Not because they LIKE you, but because THEY want to find out what YOU found out. If you made a bunch of money and sold a startup, that’s great for you! :D and congrats!… but people are going to follow you to see if THEY can learn what YOU learned and do the same thing YOU did. It doesn’t mean they like you or care what you have to say. I’m sure that most people that hit my site for dating advice don’t even read the poster’s name, or if they read it, even remember it. :)

Having said that… Along the lines of Jeremy’s question and request: “show that social media can change the world”, I do remember a situation where Chris Brogan rallied people to support Amanda Gravel in an event she put on to support someone. I’ve also seen musicians publicized and supported via social media. Very recently, Whitney Hess wrote a heartfelt post about someone she knew who died. Jay & Ryanne have traveled to REMOTE PARTS OF THE WORLD to teach people who never would have found out about it about blogging, internet connectivity and videoblogging.

So.. I’m not saying it’s impossible. It’s definitely worth a try to utilize social media for something other than publicizing ourselves, :) However, the “cred” necessary for becoming known as an authority that people can look up to to point out worthwhile causes is NOT being built up through demonstrating one’s proficiency at Public Relations. You can talk about business and social media ALL DAY, and if you turn around and don’t pay people WHAT YOU OWE THEM and ON TIME, your “cred” is ZERO. You can get interviews with “important people” ALL DAY, and if the word in the street is that you treat your fans and followers like garbage, your “cred” is ZERO. You can sell as many businesses as you want, and if nothing you have to say RIGHT NOW is original, current and relevant… your “cred” is ZERO.

So, if you’re looking for people to announce when they finally make an iPhone with the camera on the correct side so we can do video iChat with it, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for people that can tell you what tools and sites to use to enhance the productivity of your company… you’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking for what Jeremy calls “a higher value to social media, where we can make people’s lives better and really rally people to help others”, I’m sure there are people that are using social media for exactly that purpose, like maybe Roxanne Darling, but for the most part… “Ain’t that type of party”.