How do we decide who makes up the celebrity A List?
I’m going to go slightly off-topic here this morning.
Last night, while listening to the Howard Stern show (you can listen to the show 24 hours a day now thanks to Sirius Satellite Radio, which is wonderful), I heard mention of someone referred to as an “A List celebrity.” You hear this all the time, of course. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson are A Listers, and so on.
But who gets to decide who is included on this exclusive list? And going on down the logical line, we never really talk about who is part of a theoretical B List or C List, right? Usually the lower tiers of the metaphorical “list” are reserved for has beens, wannabes, and former stars, which comedienne Kathy Griffin self-mockingly references in her reality show My Life on the D-List. What about Jason Alexander, who played the wildly popular George Costanza on Seinfeld. What is he these days, B List maybe?
So this is a long-winded way of saying that we have a vague collective sense of who our biggest superstars are, and we kind of know the lowest tiers of fame when we are provided with examples.
Now, let’s tack back to the online media realm.
The appetite for celebrity and gossip content online is voracious and unending. Gawker, Defamer, Perez Hilton, TMZ, and the like are merely the biggest fish in a vast ocean of websites and blogs keeping a panting public updated on the goings on in the celebrity universe. We also know that people interested in gossip tend to be young, so it’s not a huge stretch to say that many are on social networking websites like MySpace, Last.fm, imeem, and so on.
So here’s my idea, which I’ll throw out there for public consumption and discussion.
What if there was a social media platform that focused on allowing its community to decide who is an A List celebrity? Taking this further, why not let people decide who exactly is B List, C List, and all the way down the line? A ranking system could allow the community to vote celebrities (and barely celebrities) up-and-down in real time. A social news engine could bring the hottest (and coldest, I suppose) celebrities to the front page, Digg-style. People would be able to comment about their beliefs on the topic and argue out their opinions with others.
Breaking celebrity news stories would drive people to this website to give and take away “votes” within the ranking system. Britney Spears drove a school bus full of kids into a lake? She’s dropped from B to C for sure, some might argue.
Take Steve Guttenberg as another random example. He was a big star in the ’80s, with the Police Academy movies and a bunch of other high profile projects. He’s still around these days, but you don’t hear about him that much. Is he B List today? C List? And what about someone who got eliminated from Flavor of Love 2 after the third week, thus ending their 4.5 minutes of fame? Maybe they’re F List (for Flavor)?
If done right, this website could become something of an arbiter for who stands where in the celebrity landscape. It could encompass an elegant combination of commenting, profiling, voting, and content features. It would have an enduring ability to track the celebrity/gossip world and become a natural home for fans worldwide.
Maybe someone is doing this already, someplace. But maybe not.
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April 23rd, 2008 at 10:21 am
Yeah that’s a good idea. I think one could figure out some sort of algorthim to form a basis (that might be your profiling) - as in, a hit movie or TV show would be +1, a flop would be -1, an appearance on a reality tv show would be -1, an academy award +1, etc.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:35 am
Thanks, and very interesting idea! In my view — and of course there’s no right/wrong here — it would probably need to be much more simple, probably simple up/down digg- or reddit-style voting, but who knows?
On a separate note, occurred to me that the A List / B List voting system might be a fun game to play within the blogosphere! Could use a combo of alexa, technorati, and user voting, something like that. Could be fun
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
That’s a great idea, Eric. Would be fun to watch
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Thanks Mathew !
April 24th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I like that idea! That would be a website that I think I would frequent!
April 24th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Thanks Janice!
April 28th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
The thing is, while a site like that would be cool, it would do two things (off the top of my head):
1. Present a skewed opinion of who’s hot or not, because audience would be limited in much the same way that Digg’s audience is limited and restricted to groups of certain people. You wouldn’t get the popular opinion, you’d get the opinion of the people who frequent the site.
2. Take away power from celebrities and their agents/managers/PR to “place” stories in the media in order to influence public opinion. This has been going on as long as the movie/music business has made significant amounts of money (cca. turn of the century, and one could even go back to the 19th century theater stars). This is a tried-and-true method of bumping one’s celebrity status, and they will resent having that power lessened.
On the other hand, what’s not to say they’ll hire out underlings to go and vote for them, thus effectively biasing “public” opinion once more. Don’t forget you can pay a fee to get your article to the front page of Digg. Why would this new site be any different, especially when there’s much more at stake?
April 28th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Hey Raoul - Well, I tend to look at it in two ways: would it provide value in terms of meeting a “market need” i.e. value as a product and would it provide value to an audience. Taking your thoughts into account, I’d still argue yes on both points.
I don’t see Digg’s audience as providing “skewed” opinions, for instance. I simply see the stories on Digg as being popular / important with the Digg community. And honestly, wouldn’t sucking some power away from the entertainment industry and returning it to “the people” be kind of a cool thing?
I suppose the original thought behind the idea was: who comes up with this A List, D List stuff in the first place? Wouldn’t it be cool if you had a site that let people (who were into this kind of thing) decide?
If the site was popular at all, then at the least it could be an “authority” on this topic to combat and perhaps refute the whims of the celeb creators and managers that you mention.