Liam Kenney - Supplemental Post #1

 When Does a Star Become A Star? 


    About two weeks ago, I went to the bar El Prado in Echo Park. El Prado has become an incredibly hot spot for Los Angeles' up and coming, especially those involved in music, art, skating, and other typically alternative pursuits. El Prado is unique in the way that people spill out into the street, crowding the surrounding sidewalk drinking and merrymaking. As I surveyed the crowd, I began to see familiar faces, faces I recognized from Instagram, faces of... niche internet micro celebrities. 

    I don't remember when I first heard it, but the term "niche internet micro celebrity" has taken the web by storm, and I can't think of a better descriptor for this new form of celebrity, someone in the strange limbo between actual star, and unknown. 

One of the people in the bustling crowd was the musician Izzy Spears, someone who I had read about in Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, and the New York based publication Office Magazine. I was familiar with Izzy Spears music, as some of my friends had been long time supporters. 

 The niche internet micro celebrity is a unique concept in the sense that it's a modern transfiguration of how star power is acquired. The niche internet micro celebrity is a way of people to speculate, to buy shares of a celebrity's stock, hoping for a major ROI, for social bragging rights attached to "being in the know." Ultimately, my friends and I decided not to make contact with the people we had developed a para-social relationship to, but we all noted that one day we might like to tell our friends that we were there from the start, or at least, close to it, that fateful night in Echo Park. 

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/izzy-spears-tells-us-his-dream-collaborator-and-musical-red-flags 

https://officemagazine.net/spoke-my-skull 



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