( This is Kate, you will meet her later)Fame is the new black.
Ask any human aged 30 and below and guaranteed 99% of them will tell you that being famous is a job.
Ever since Paris Hilton popped a couple of E's and opened wide, being known for something, ANYTHING, is the ambition of an entire generation....or two.
Strung out and star struck these 'i-everything' hipsters, that together make up the collective spend of the average GDP of a small African nation, are a social phenomena of breath-taking speed and savvy.
They want you to know who they are, and they know how to do it, and they are NOT fucking shy about.
Now I have a friend, a man I privately call 'Mr 65%', who spends his life getting Brand Recognition into the marketplace.
It's a multi million dollar industry.
And in my time, I have written enough 30 second commercials to fill all the dead air on the planet.
But in both of these cases, what I am talking about here is the 'Advertisement and recognition of a product'.
Something to sell, something to buy.
A market force.
What the 'famous for being famous' guru's are all about carries none of that baggage.
It does not mean 'wealth creation' or ' creation of product', it means being talked about, recognised, popular and discarded for the mere purpose of being talked about, recognised, popular and discarded- often within the space 48 hours.
To this younger, faster generation, those 48 hours may be the ride of a lifetime, and they are happy to take the ride without pause.
Not so much " to be famous and beyond", and just the "to be famous" part.
This week on the Internet- specifically on facebook- there came the phenomenon of 'Kate's Party'.
If you did not see it, do not feel bad. I happen to be the proud producer of 3 very Internet active young adults, and it is only through them that I live vicariously in the etherworld.
Kate's Party- for those of you who missed it- was an event originally posted as a Birthday Party Invite for a small bunch of friends of Kate, a real girl who lives in the sleepy Australian city of Adelaide.
Kate's mates had decided to throw her a Birthday bash. In the invite, sent only to a small number of people, the organisers stated something to the effect of " please let us know if you are bringing someone as our flat is not so big, and we need to know how many we are catering for".
A reasonable request.
But then they made one fatal- and as it turned out hysterically funny- mistake.
They left the administration of the event open.
Anyone could invite people.
And so SOMEONE on the list, SOMEHOW send the invite to 400 of their closest friends, who sent it to 400 of their closest friends, who sent it to etc etc etc..........
By the time I was invited to RSVP to Kate's Party, some 300,000 people had agreed to come, and another 300,000 were awaiting reply.
Only a few said that they were not attending.After all, who doesn't like a party? And Kate looked friendly enough in her photo.
Unlike other facebook disasters where the police are called and it all ends up on a current affairs show, there was never any chance any harm would be done. The organisers had never disclosed the address.
It was all done, by stealth and with stealth, in the safety of the interworld.
But by now, both Kate and her party were famous.
Other groups sprung up.
Groups inviting people to 'Pre- Kate's Party Drinks', a group dedicated to buying her a card from everyone, a group suggesting how best to secure parking, a group suggesting that everyone will score at Kate's party except the Storm ( an Australian football reference) a group discussing what to wear to Kate's party, a group talking about what to do if you meet someone who wasn't invited -VERY awkward- and even a group discussing the fact that Kate's Party was the epitome of Internet power.
In all,within 4 DAYS some 300 groups had arisen with a total membership of well over 1.5 million people world wide all dedicated to a young girl from Adelaide, who never even sought fame in the first place.
Ask any salesman and they will tell you, those are good numbers.
The ACTUAL organisers of Kate's Party called for calm on facebook, they even cancelled the original event, but the cat was well and truly out of the bag, and Kate's Party will go down in Internet legend as what can be done to raise awareness of an object /an idea/a person in the blink of an eye, with the click of a mouse.
In commercial terms, it's what's known as the 'tipping point', and the book named as such went on to sell many millions of copies. If you haven't read it, read it.
I discussed the force behind Kate's Party with my 19 year old son Kip.
Kip is THE PERFECT example of the generation I am talking about.
He sees fame as a job, he is never without access to the internet, he has cash.
I suggested it was the words " our apartment is small" that made the difference.
I think it appealed to the ridiculous side of most peoples sense of humour.
"OK, your flat is small, lets see how many people we can squeeze in".
Kind of like the obsession with VW's and Uni students in the 60's, only in a virtual world.
He doesn't care.
He just thinks it's great.
He thinks Kate is great, and he thinks it's totally cool that now she is famous.
I suspect he would be over awed to meet her.
So what can you do?
The idea that you must achieve something to be someone is long gone.
And I sound, and feel, like an old person when I suggest that the creation of matter, matters.
Fame is it's own reward, and from here on in, the end truly justifies the means.
Ask Ms. Hilton.
Like millions of others I sat glued to the computer screen waiting to watch the sexual acrobatics of a lifetime such was the hype.
Instead I was confronted by a thin chick with a wonky eye moaning like a drunken fur seal speaking in a voice that sounded like a 3 year old sucking on helium.
And yet, to this day, she gets paid tens of thousands of US dollars to turn up to events and squint at the camera.
Excellent.
At least she knows how to 'work the angles'.
In Kate's case, her future is wide open.
She may go into politics, she may release an album, she may write a book about her experiences as a former celebrity.
And in here we find the painful truth, because next month, or indeed next week, Kate will be gone.
Replaced by another set of sweaty hands grabbing for the spotlight.
Forget 15 minutes Andy, these days it's 15 seconds.
Fame- all fame- is fleeting.
Blink......and you'll miss it.
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