There's a new saying that I believe explains internet fame perfectly, derived from the Warhol moment. "Everyone will be famous to 15 people." When dealing with old fame, exposure was the most important thing you could have. You needed to be on every show, in every magazine, and be in everyone's faces at all times to be famous. Now, the quantity of people talking about you doesn't matter as much as the quality. David Weinberger of the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society says, "Internet fame can be more intimate, more of a personal connection between the one and the few." [2] With the advent of YouTube, Twitter, and sites for niche interests, people can seem a lot more famous than they actually are. However, we create another echo chamber and make fame a much bigger deal than it really is. For example, some of the actors that get talked about the most on social media actually are known by less than 50% of people polled in the US. [3] Benedict Cumberbatch seems like a big deal since all people talk about is Benedict Cumberbatch. But, to the general public, nobody really knows who he is. It's because we don't talk to the general public, we talk to our friends who know about him because we know Benedict Cumberbatch. People talking about someone already famous makes them seem more famous..
With this, we get to Phil Fish. Fish is a famous indie game developer whose first main commercial release, "Fez," has been an indie game darling and sold 1 million copies. [4] He is one of the faces of indie gaming. However, most people wouldn't know who Phil Fish is, even people who play games. He's, numerically, not very important, especially not when Minecraft has sold 54 million copies in comparison. However, he regularly insults gamers, the industry, and fellow developers. It is this behavior that makes him so famous.
In the real world, fame is given to you by groups that will pay for your promotion and creation. On the Internet, fame just happens to you. [5, 14:00] One post can turn someone from some guy on the Internet to a performer talking to an audience. The line isn't clear other than enough people talking about them. Fish was just a normal, hot-headed indie developer like many out there that never get noticed. What made Fish different was that "Fez" was the type of game that was easy to show or explain on the Internet, so he became a little famous. [5, 1:58] The problem wasn't that he was more angry or gifted than anyone else, it was that people believed he was more famous than he deserved to be. For a quick analogy, think of Nickelback. [5, 3:48] People hate Nickelback not because it's bad, but because it's bad and popular. However, Nickelback signed contracts and arranged things so they could be this popular. Fish just became popular because his game got an audience, he spoke in a way that would make one hated, and that made him have a bigger audience.
Fish was now famous in the gaming circle, metaphorically his 15 people. His fame became more significant not because he was known outside of gaming circles (such as Minecraft) but because, in the gaming circle, the quality of Fish-related discussion increased. He would spout something hot-headed since that's what he did before he was famous and he would get in trouble because he was now famous. It became a new topic to talk about regarding Fish. It's not like Nickelback where they have PR agents that help Nickelback stay famous. Fish is a guy acting like a normal guy with strong opinions on the Internet, except that he is being scrutinized like he was an old fame celebrity. Eventually, he says too many hurtful things and the discussion turns into hating Fish, which actually makes him more famous since hate is another reason to talk about someone. He gained no new audience like old fame required, but his current audience of the gaming circle discussed him more since they felt they had a personal stake in putting Fish in his place. Gaming only saw Fish as someone to hate even when he did good things, since that didn't fit the idea of Fish. The discussion is no longer about his game or him but rather to create talk that confirms our preconceived notions of him. [5, 9:36] Eventually, he became the figurehead of indie gaming's woes. The rationale is that, if Fish is the a famous indie developer, he must be a symbol of indie developers. However, since we only talk about Fish in a negative light, we think the entire indie developer scene is bad like Phil Fish. The audience creates a narrative that enforces itself.
With Internet fame, it does not matter what you did. It matters how easily people can talk about it. The hate on Fish was just him personally offending some people who spoke loudly and often in an echo chamber on Twitter. My theory behind the hate of Phil is the idea of what the Internet is and what it actually is colliding. People believe the Internet connects people from all different kinds of worlds together. When you talk with people online and see they all hate Phil Fish, it seems like everyone's talking about him and how awful he is. However, the Internet is a lot more of an echo chamber than you think. Sometimes, you hear what you want to hear. After that, you share your idea based on that first one and the echo gets louder. The circle continues and everyone believes their idea a little more strongly until they believe one man is the symbol for an industry when he was just one man.
EARLY MONDAY EDIT: Mojang (company that owns Minecraft) was just confirmed to be sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. However, Minecraft's creator, Markus Persson, is not going. He wrote a blog post on why he left and it actually references a source I used and the idea I was getting across with Phil. I unfortunately don't have the time to analyze this but I thought it was important to add. [6]
"Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn’t have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter."
EARLY MONDAY EDIT: Mojang (company that owns Minecraft) was just confirmed to be sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. However, Minecraft's creator, Markus Persson, is not going. He wrote a blog post on why he left and it actually references a source I used and the idea I was getting across with Phil. I unfortunately don't have the time to analyze this but I thought it was important to add. [6]
"Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn’t have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter."
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