living someone else’s dream, one flash bulb at a time.

It seems the gossip pages these days are slimmer than a Wall Street broker’s wallet, and the usual go-to sites for the scoop on NYC celebrity finally had to address the gossip column content crisis of 2009. Gawker outlined a pretty detailed list of reasons there has been a scant amount of attention paid to celebs or their scandal. One proposal made is that because no one has any money, no one wants to read about or watch the fabulous lives of celebs and socialites since there isn’t a hope in hell anyone could ever afford to party or shop like their favourite E! characters. Ummm…..I didn’t have two nickels to rub together last year just like this year, but you bet your ass I was watching Britney assault SUV’s with an umbrella, and I loved every minute of it.  Furthermore, if I did have even a fraction of the money it took to live the life of a beloved and famous Housewife, I’d be too busy swiping my black card at Barney’s to read Page Six (may it rest in peace).

Celebrity obsession has and always will be about escapism.  Sure people have problems right now. The majority of Americans had problems last year and two years before that and ten years before that. We read about the disasters of the rich and famous because we want to forget about the fact there isn’t enough money in the bank to cover this month’s rent or that there is another round of lay offs going down at the office next week.  We laugh at the blunders of our favourite blonde socialite to keep from crying at the pathetic state of affairs we find ourselves living in.

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andy is so happy

We hear there has been a little confusion, and so, we clarify:

Your online attention span is, well, short. We get that. Everyone’s is.

So, you land on a Fame Game page and what happens next? There are numbers, charts, images, names scrolling, links, and yes, probably an Andy Warhol graphic or two. Maybe you panic and you leave, but most likely, there’s a reason you are on the site and that reason, whether you realize it or not, links back to yourself.

Whether you are claiming/updating your profile, looking at someone else’s, checking-out a party or project page or just keeping tabs on Julia Allison, you are examining your relationship to others and beginning to piece together at least a small part of an intricately woven web created by the media.

Our hope is that you, users, take the time to explore—once you realize that you too are playing the game. Fame Game’s mission is complex and it cannot possibly be discerned from a single page grab. But read the About. Keep tabs on PLAY. See who’s Moving and Shaking. Consider how people are Connected. Check the Recent Parties. Open your eyes to the bigger picture here and use your social capital, big or small, for good.

You may be active on Fame Game. You may not be. But, bare minimum, if you are here, you are beginning to think about fame, the media, and your role in it, in a slightly different way. And though it might sound redundant, we’d like for you to play along with us — after all, we’re still figuring out the rules ourselves.