Turning from influencer into a celebrity.

Celebrities have four sides to themselves: the professional (this is what I do very well), the personality (this is who I am), and their private lives (this is how I live). In addition, being a celebrity is tightly linked to gossip.

An influencer usually covers only one of these aspects. Either they’re a professional doing what they do, someone promoting a certain lifestyle, or a personality doing nothing but being a personality. An actual celebrity does all three things. In addition, even without drama involving the speaker, a celebrity’s private life is talked about by others to a much larger degree than influencers’.

A celebrity gives their audience an avalanche of feelings. The goal is to make a person feel better by knowing this person and feeling joy over this person’s existence. They can appreciate their work, admire it, and be a fan of it, but a celebrity will also be an admirable, fun, entertaining personality in addition to their skills. This is a powerful experience for the “fans.” (I personally hate it when they call people reading about celebrities “fans.” The fact I know everything there is to know about Amber Heard hardly makes me “a fan,” and it is insulting to be referred to as such. However. I digress.)

View count vs. Celebrity.

While woodturning videos by an anonymous woodworker are great to watch (I love them), you don’t watch them wishing to know who is making them. You may even feel irritated if the owner of those channels suddenly pops onto the camera, acting like they’re a celebrity. You might have admired their work for months, but when you finally see them, you’d be thinking, “Who are you, and why are you talking to me? Get back to work or introduce yourself, you rude…!”

There is an art to seeking attention, and while to narcissists, attention in itself is the objective regardless of what kind of attention they get, others want attention as a means to an end: most often, to sell something, to help in some way, to change the world, to educate, or to entertain others. And the latter is no unworthy cause; you want others to feel good for a while, perhaps distract them from the stresses of their lives and make them laugh for a bit. And if you can edutain… The best deal of the lot.

People change their minds from negative/neutral to admiration SLOWLY.

If you want to go from an influencer to a celebrity, you’ll have to gradually adjust your way of doing things. Don’t just go from turning wood into making massive personal confessions on camera because none of your audience is here for it. Instead, start injecting your personality into your videos. First, you’ll start talking to the audience from behind the camera. Get them gradually used to the idea you exist as an extension of your skillful hands. Inject a few jokes about your personality in there.

Then, start making short casual appearances on camera; reach for something past the camera without worrying people might see you. Then, extend these periods until you basically have come out from behind the camera giving full-fledged tutorials (or something) and jokes on it. Start injecting personal stories and anecdotes that have nothing to do with woodturning. Call your wife by her name (if she allows you to), but don’t hide behind your children… Or anyone else more interesting than yourself. (You know they had to cut a ton of Johnny Depp scenes out of Platoon because he kept outshining Charlie Sheen, who was supposed to be the next star? Charlie Sheen is definitely interesting, but he’s not as interesting as Johnny Depp. F*** they should make a Johnny Depp recut of Platoon. They’d make a killing.)

If you give an existing audience a huge splash of who you are at once, AFTER they’ve gotten used to you being a one-trick pony, you’ll have to make the shift gradually and strategically. However, if you have it in you… The strategy I’ve chosen is to slam everything at people at once, so they’ll know there’s always more to find. More sides to see. Depending on the platform, they’ll see something different… All me.

And hopefully a friend I’ve made. *Sarcastically* What I might mean is on Sebastyne.men.

Timing is divine.

You might have noticed you self-sabotage. You might have even wondered if you actually want what you want, but I have an alternate explanation: Divine timing. Everything will come clear sooner or later, but until then, you keep up the sabotage.

I believe that once you’re ready to GET THERE, the same tasks that previously felt like a waste of time, stupid, or unpleasant will suddenly not feel tacky at all.

the Modern celebrities must be real.

While yesteryears’ celebrities got to have somewhat of a built image, due to there being fewer cameras around and fewer mass media to spread their f***ups globally, the modern celebrity is a lot less likely to be able to hide behind the carefully crafted polished image of a pristine idol. If they cannot live up to their crafted image, social media will find it out.

While Amber Heard COULD HAVE gotten away with being a husband-beater in the 1990’s, (it is suggested Courtney Love killed Curt Cobain in 1994 and got away with it,) social media in 2016-2022’s made it impossible after a while. Holes in her stories were too big to ignore to those willing to find out the truth even before the trials. A celebrity can’t have a day off anymore; being a grieving Amish abused wife on Friday doesn’t fly if you intend to beam happiness in the arm of your lesbian lover by noon Saturday.

Therefore, to a large degree, modern celebrities must be willing and able to remain truthful about everything in their lives, lest their helo will quickly slip. This is why giving people information about your unusual sex life is a safer bet than trying to hide it completely if you’re not entirely vanilla. If they’d be shocked to find you’re into BDSM, it’s best to mention it, at least to let people be aware you know what the letter combination means.

The LAST THING you want is to wind up on camera trying to explain why you misled people into believing you were a great role model for the New Amish children when truthfully, you loved to get whipped before getting fucked… Or whatever. Then again, it is not entirely smart to prop yourself up to be totally BDSM when you’ve never been in a relationship involving BDSM.

Make friends and hire help across boundaries online.

To me, the Internet has always been a fascinating thing. It puts tools into your own hands, and although you have to learn many things yourself, theoretically, you can be a one-person show from start to finish, cutting down your absolute necessity dependencies on crappy people to 0. Previously, you had to sign up with whatever leech you could entice to promote you and do shady deals with shady characters to get your head above water. The Internet has changed all that – but not without problems of its own, of course. One of the main problems is that you’re competing with the entire world.

But… That has also opened possibilities. You CAN make friends with awesome people online and take these relationships into the real world whenever and once you can. You can COMPLETELY renew your circles and drop excess packages without feeling you cannot possibly find a replacement for your management team. Theoretically, you could hire someone cool to promote you from Spain despite living in Darwin, Australia.

Fiction about your life; gossip.

I find it disappointing that gossip has a bad reputation because it’s been mistaken for… Get this: News.

I think gossip and exaggerated stories make celebrities just a tad more interesting and entertaining. Gossip should happen simply for fun, but it should be fun for the target of the gossip, too. Good gossip shouldn’t be mean-spirited; it should be entertaining and supporting that person’s image, not trying to assassinate it (unless the celebrity duly deserves the attack… like… say, who would I mention. Oh, someone like Amber Heard).

Nothing should be believed without question, but give the public something to talk about. I suggest that the celebrity themselves should stick steadily to the truth, but they might want to feed some stories to friends who might say something…

Still, one might argue that the difference between a star and a celebrity is the gossip written about them. You can be a star mastering your profession, lifestyle, and personality, but you’re a celebrity once the stories about you start getting fictional and written by someone other than you or your promotion team. Or maybe it’s stars that get gossiped about. I’m not sure. Which is bigger, a celebrity or a star? Whichever way, like it or not, being gossiped about is quite a big compliment, don’t you think?

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