A Grand Theory of Celebrity and Who-dom

"And by "Who-dom," I don't mean the Seussian variety but the taxonomy coined by 's Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger: the vast, sub-stratospheric tier of celebrity occupied by figures whose fame is intensely meaningful to some and virtually nonexistent to everyone else. Whos are defined in opposition to Thems, the indisputable celebrities known to most except those living under a rock or who willingly reject the very notion of pop culture,"

"For more than a decade, first through a newsletter and then with the podcast Who? Weekly, Weber and Finger have kept reliable and amusing tabs on the ever-expanding universe of Whos and dissected the increasingly jumbled celebrity hierarchy. The podcast marked its tenth anniversary last month, an extraordinary run not just for an audio-only show still gleefully independent and resistant to pivoting to video but also for an ongoing project tracking celebrity itself, the infrastructure of which has radically transformed over that same period."

"And as if to put a bow on the anniversary, Weber and Finger have now written a book. I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity will come out September 26 from Crown, and it turns their ridiculously fun celebrity-tracking work into something formal: a cultural history of fame in the digital era that grapples with what happens when almost anyone can become famous - or famousish."

Who-dom describes a sprawling tier of celebrity populated by people whose fame is deeply significant to small groups but largely unknown to most. Whos stand in contrast to Thems, the universally recognized celebrities, and that distinction is blurring as attention fragments. The podcast Who? Weekly has documented and dissected this expanding Who universe for more than a decade while remaining audio-only and independent. A new book, I Want to Be Famous, reframes that ongoing tracking into a cultural history of fame in the digital era and examines phenomena like sponcon and Notes-app apologies.

Read at Vulture