Internet Fame

In my spare time I do crawl around the internet, reading, observing and just generally lazing about. I've been a lot of places and met a lot of people, virtually that is. And so it was only a few minutes ago I was idly reading a blog, got redirected to a forum and watched a little internet war spill out. It got me thinking, thinking about 'internet fame'. That is to say, people who are well known not in real life, but on the internet. These are people who tend to be famous in certain circles. For example, hordes of fans on Youtube will have heard of Applemilk, just as hordes of people on 4-chan hate her to death. And it's specifically this I want to discuss.
It seems internet fame has one very simple route with two possible endings. It starts with a person regularly contributing to a specific website, be it a big place like Youtube or Myspace, or a smaller place tied to a particular activity such as a forum for a game or movie series, whatever. This person becomes well known for their contributions or maybe even their personality and for a while at least, everything is fine and dandy. The person has the respect of their peers and that's nice, maybe even a little hero worship, possibly a friendly neighbourhood stalker or two. And then it goes downhill. Either the person becomes mundane, losing their special appeal and thus their fanbase, or they become the target of someone who hates them, someone who for whatever reason, can command just as big a following without any real effort with the end result that the person loses their internet fame from lack of respect or being forced into inactivity.

Internet fame is fleeting at best. Standing out from the crowd only puts a bigger target on one's back. This I know from experience. First hand experience from the days when I created and ran my own website and second hand experience from seeing the hate, often misplaced, aimed at some of the more well known people on the 'net.

It's saddening to see so much hate aimed at people who don't deserve it, just as much as it is saddening to see fame grabbed by people who don't deserve it and the internet has equal shares of both. It's weird to know that there are always people who will remember you and to know which of those remember you fondly and which of those see red at the mere mention of your name. It's maddening to know that in the case of the latter, you can never change their mind and that trying is a futile exercise.

In closing. I am often glad that I'm not so well known that I'm hated. :) Obscurity has its rewards. Being in the firing line means you're always one bullet away from death.

Actually no, that was a crappy metaphor, scratch that. I'm done warbling now. What are your thoughts on internet fame?