Is Do It Yourself (DIY) Celebrityhood Coming?

Who will we idolize when everyone can be a star?

A creative person’s life often involves invention and reinvention.

Long before novelist Erika Leonard donned the pen name E.L. James of the popular series 50 Shades of Grey, another British writer Mary Ann Evans, transformed herself into George Eliot. (You may recall the latter as the author of classics like Silas Marner you were assigned to read in high school.)

Then there are creatives who don’t just assume new monikers. They invent entire mythologies for themselves, launching them into the celebrity stratosphere. “Before he was the Notorious B.I.G., Christopher Wallace 

spent his childhood growing up between the streets of Brooklyn and his mother’s family home in Trelawny, Jamaica,” writes Pippa Raga for Distractify. “So, it may come as no surprise that once the aspiring rapper needed to decide on a stage name for himself, he chose one inspired by a fellow Caribbean islander, actor Calvin Lockhart.”

And who was Lockhart? An invention himself: a black actor who broke into Hollywood by consciously cultivating an image of a suave gangster in roles typically reserved for leading white men.

Returning to Raga, she explains, “When Biggie started gaining recognition for his virtuoso rapping on the corners of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood he grew up in, he decided to make a demo tape showcasing his talents. He recorded his first tape under the name Biggie Smalls, inspired by the gang leader of the same name in the 1975 movie Let’s Do It Again, starring Calvin Lockhart as the gangster.”

Of course, there are also creatives who go a step further. Bypassing traditional gatekeepers, they bootstrap their way into public consciousness through sheer force of will. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one such person.

By her own admission, she blew her chances of being cast in PBS’ wildly popular series Downton Abbey, a role that may have catapulted her to stardom. “I went in and I remember it was quite a serious part and I had really been auditioning for comedy for a couple of years and I was really thrilled to come in for this part, so I really put my heart and soul into it,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in 2017.

Unfortunately, the casting director didn’t view her as serious or heartfelt. “When I finished, they were like, 'We had no idea she was so…hilarious!’” explains Waller-Bridge. Undeterred, she clinched fame and fortune DIY-style. She wrote, starred in, and produced the Amazon series Fleabag. A hit with fans, it also enjoyed massive critical success, netting 11 Emmy nominations in 2019 and securing Waller-Bridge the win for “lead comedy actress.”

Tomorrow’s celebrities can take a page out of her book. They, too, needn’t wait to be discovered and to monetize their brand in our ever-evolving Attention Economy. Instead, using technology unavailable just a few years ago, it’s now possible for anyone to rise to the top culturally—to become a star.

All you need is a device and a WIFI connection.

Just ask MrBeast. With 130+ million subscribers, he offers a primer on how to achieve this feat. But it wasn’t always easy for the young man (real name Jimmy Donaldson) to break in. “For the first few years, Donaldson attempted, unsuccessfully, to master the YouTube algorithm by creating content he thought would attract the largest audience,” explains Business Insider.

Then, Donaldson found his niche. “After that first video [of Donaldson’s stunt of counting to 100,000] went viral, MrBeast found what the YouTube algorithm liked. He quickly amassed more views with similar stunts, like spinning a fidget spinner for 24 hours and watching Jake Paul's ‘It's Everyday Bro’ music video for 10 hours straight. By November 2017, MrBeast reached 1 million subscribers,” again according to Business Insider.

Donaldson has since found his stride. Now the world’s most popular YouTuber, last month he broke the internet with more than 70 million views for producing what’s being called “charity porn”—paying for sight-restoring cataract surgery for the blind.

A DIY celebrity, MrBeast exemplifies what may be thought of as a decentralization of traditional power dynamics. To understand how, consider book publishing. Until quite recently, it was hard for aspiring authors to break in. At the mercy of gatekeepers like publishing houses, editors, and agents, they had to play the literary game well. Or remained forever locked out.

Then in 2005, Amazon acquired CreateSpace, a company allowing users to self-publish. This disrupted the old system. Suddenly, it was easy for anyone with a device and a WIFI connection to become a (self) published author.

Forget about having to run off book copies at Kinko’s. No need to even house these books in your garage. CreateSpace—which became KDP Amazon—offers a “print on demand” model whereby your book isn’t printed or shipped until it’s ordered, saving you vast sums on publishing and inventory costs. 

No more queries letters to agents, begging them to represent your book. Just like Waller-Bridge paved her own way in TV world, you can DIY your literary career, becoming a famous novelist through self-publishing.

Just ask Andy Weir, author of The Martian. Before it was ever a hit film adaptation starring Matt Damon, it “started as a self-published book,” according to NPR.

There’s yet another implication of the DIY celebrity model: our concept of authenticity. Today, we know and love real celebrities like Taylor Swift. We often admire their talents, their looks, even their idiosyncratic quirkiness.

But tomorrow’s celebrities could be entirely constructed by code. Products of human ingenuity and imagination, everything from their physical attributes to their personality could be designed much like a Dungeons and Dragons player establishes their character, down to their hit points.

Also, now that ChatGPT has arrived on the scene, it’s possible to go one step further with decentralized DIY. Imagine you wanted to combine the literary world with Hollywood to make your celebrity avatar not just another pretty face, but an intellectual heavyweight.

No problem.

Just use the new AI Chatbot from OpenAI to supply with you all the info you need to become a respected thought leader, no matter your subject. If you wanted to go further, you could even have the app write your book, then ask it for tips on marketing it, taking your DIY celebrityhood to the next level.

Where does this go from here? That’s anyone’s guess. (Maybe we should consult ChatGPT!) Seriously, my best prediction is that bottom-up culture (produced by formerly disempowered people), will give top-down media a run for their money. Does this mean DIY celebrities replace the former category? Unclear. For now, what I can say is this is a fascinating time to live, an era in which the old ways of doing things are transforming before our eyes.

Thank you for reading. If you like what you just read, please subscribe for more content. We write about how technology is transforming how we create and consume sports, movies, videos, TV, games, and social media. Any opinions or forecasts contained herein reflect the personal and subjective judgments and assumptions of the author only.