It's been nearly half a century since Andy Warhol predicted that everyone in the future would be famous for fifteen minutes. It turns out he was wrong. Thanks to web technologies like YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and MySpace, everyone on the web is famous to fifteen people, not for fifteen minutes.

Social media has created a generation of do-it-yourself cyber celebrities who carefully choose how to present themselves to the world through profiles and photos. They're often called the Millennial generation, and are comprised of 85 million North Americans born since 1982. For brands, they represent a source vast spending power. So marketing researchers are drawing information from this generation's use of web technology, and marketers and advertisers are targeting them through it. This past weekend, for example, Facebook added a polling feature, targeting participants with a particular location, profile, keywords, age, or sex, giving marketers access to the opinions and preferences of the site's 20+ million users. The fact that this generation simultaneously "faces" inward and outward through web technologies makes them easy to access and target.

But while marketers and users are benefiting from these social technologies, there are still some growing pains. The traps now aren't just time wasting and narcissism, but actual solipsism. And this generation is discovering that even free, virtual, instant celebrity has a price.

The case of 'Bridezilla'

Ingrid Haas, 24, is acutely aware of the power of viral marketing and the implications of Warhol's iconic warning in a culture of DIY celebrity. A few months ago, she wrote, filmed and posted "Bridezilla"...

...a YouTube video sensation in which one of her friends plays a "wigged out" bride who returns to a hotel room filled with cheery, champagne popping bridesmaids then chops off her own "horrendous" hairstyle.

Now she is "wigging out" about her rapid rise to fame, she explains to The Tyee from L.A., where she just moved to capitalize on her newfound DIY celeb status. Only a week after the video was posted, Haas was on Good Morning America.

After viewers realized Bridezilla's wig-out wasn't "real," but staged by an actress as part of a marketing campaign for SunSilk hair products, it was removed from YouTube. Ironically, the debate that sparked in the blogging community over the video's authenticity contributed to its popularity. By the time it was removed, "Bridezilla" had already accumulated over 9 million views, becoming one of the top 100 most viewed videos of all time on YouTube. Haas has since received lucrative television and movie offers and has worked the talk show circuit from GMA to Jimmy Kimmel. And there was even talk of attending the Oscars, the 24-year-old tells The Tyee.

Like many members of the Millennial generation, Haas grew up indoctrinated in the cult of celebrity. "Paris Hilton" was the top Google search term for news articles and Britney Spears was number one on Yahoo's annual list of the most-searched for terms on the Internet last year.

But like Haas, other Millennials aren't just star-gazing. About half of the youth surveyed in a recent Pew Research demographic study say that becoming famous is valued highly by members of their generation. There is a definitely generational trend toward a broader interest in self-presentation and celebrity, according to David MacDonald, group vice president of Environics Research Group in Toronto. And it's easier than ever before to indulge their "look at me" appetites since fame is just a click away.

Millennial micro-celebrities

This is the first generation to grow up with state of the art technologies, such as the Internet, cell phones and digital cameras, which allow them to micromanage their identities. Haas isn't the only do-it-yourself celeb of her generation. Consider lonelygirl15, the video blogger ("vlogger") who became the darling of the blogosphere:

Or Amber Stratt, the 20-year-old Maxim model with close to 5,000 MySpace friends, who, as a means of self-promotion, proudly declares that she'll accept anyone as a "friend" who wants to add her. There's a term for those, like her, who aspire to collect as many friends as they can -- "MySpace whores."

Stratt is far from alone. A majority of Millennials surveyed by Pew have used social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and more than four in 10 have created personal profiles as of January 2007, when the Pew poll was released. Each of the 20+ million Facebook members, including 2 million Canadians, is a do-it-yourself celebrity publicist. Facebook is in fact the number one photo sharing site, likely because it allows you to "tag" photos of yourself in your friends' albums and post them in a gallery devotedly entitled "Photos of Me."

Customizing "me"

The Internet has democratized the notion of fame, according to Mathew Ingram, a technology columnist and blogger for the Globe and Mail. "You can have a website, a blog, a Facebook profile of your own relatively easily now. Barriers to entry are lower than they used to be because you can communicate via video or text from your room. Before, you had to be on T.V. or in the newspaper in order to become a celebrity," he says.

In the online world of self-promotion, market success becomes based on how many hits you get. "You get bragging rights to say you're on one of the top ten or hundred hits on YouTube, or based on how many MySpace friends you have."

Jean Piaget, the famous developmental psychologist, explained that the construction of the self occurs through interaction with one's environment. The online realm is a new outlet for the self-esteem development Piaget imagined because it provides a virtual environment for youth to express their "selves."

Blogs and social networking sites facilitate self-empowerment, according to David MacDonald of Environics. "There are endless possibilities in places like MySpace and other interactive spaces because you can construct whatever identity you want."

Technorati, a blog tracking site, discovered that people are generating an average of 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second. And a majority of these blogs take the form of online diary entries. Blogs can make you a legend -- at least in your own mind -- because they iconize your own life the way paparazzi and gossip rags do for Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

A generation of narcissists?

But there's a cost. A recent report entitled "Egos Inflating Over Time" released by five psychologists in the U.S. found that today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than any generation before them.

The researchers examined the responses of 16,475 college students in the U.S. who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. They found that students' scores have risen steadily since 1982. By 2006, two-thirds of the students had above average scores, 30 per cent more than in 1982.

Jean Twenge, one of the researchers in the narcissism study and the author of Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable Than Ever Before, blames the "self-esteem movement" that began in the early 1980s.

Since being born, Millennials have grown up being told they're "special," she says. And it's no coincidence that the "I'm special" paradigm coincides with an explosion of DIY celebrities in cyberspace. But the role of technology in facilitating narcissism -- especially egocentric online communities like MySpace and Facebook -- is controversial among academics.

For example, Dr. Del Paulhus, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, says that although Twenge is generating a lot of buzz by arguing that Millennials are more narcissistic, he doesn't see the trend emerging in his studies. He studies narcissism, or what he calls self-absorption, which is narcissism to the point a person thinks he or she is more entitled than others.

"In fact, it seems to me that there is some movement back to caring about the world, which would be inversely connected to narcissism," he says. "There are a lot of aspects to the Internet, and looking at yourself is a miniscule part of that. You are a thousand times more in touch with information and others than people in the 1960s were. So you should be much more out in the world than focusing on yourself."

Virtual communities, withdrawn realities?

Dr. Marc Ouellette is a Cultural Studies professor at McMaster University, who teaches students about the relationship between the popular culture they are fixated on and the real world. He believes the cultural shift facilitated by do-it-yourself technologies does not create a trend toward narcissism, but toward solipsism, which is a psychological behaviour where individuals believe their world is the only thing that exists. In the online realm, this means that if you are producing and customizing your reality, you are unlikely to understand alternative worldviews.

"The idea of becoming a celebrity is seen as one of the ultimate ends in our culture and it promotes people only thinking of themselves, which makes for a very thoughtless and inconsiderate society," says Ouellette.

But the effects of social networking sites are more nuanced than that, says the Globe and Mail's technology blogger, Mathew Ingram. It can make people both more connected and more self-centered. While the Internet may encourage egocentrism, it creates a community of "egos" who connect and interact with one another in meaningful ways.

"Yes, you're on the computer but you're still connecting with people. Is talking to someone via e-mail less real than talking over the phone or writing a letter?"

Many Millennials join groups like "Hottest Girl on Facebook." But they also create constructive communities, "Petition to the G8 + 5 to get action on climate change," through social networking sites, which makes them more in touch than previous generations, says David MacDonald of Environics.

Recently, Facebook became a useful source of information in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. Almost immediately, VTech students created an "I'm OK" group to communicate that they had survived the trauma. Within a day, the group had more than 130,000 members and 10,000 comments pouring in. The site also became a personal space for mourners who gathered at the profiles that the murdered students built themselves.

Confidence, customization, celebrity

But the instant gratification provided by these sites could have worrisome consequences for the way the Millennial generation functions in the real world, says MacDonald.

Millennials are entering the labor force in larger numbers than any generation since the Boomers. They are less willing than prior generations to stay in a career they are not happy with, expecting to be rewarded for their efforts right away. And they could run into problems with Boomer employers when they enter the workforce, says MacDonald.

"Millennials feel in control and empowered by their technology, so they are extremely confident," says MacDonald. "But this generation expects to leapfrog faster in careers than they have the experience or the background to warrant. Confidence is good but if you don't know how to channel it effectively in the workforce, it could backfire."

Indeed, "confidence, customization and celebrity" might be the mantra that unites this fragmented generation. And these three characteristics of "Generation Me" are disrupting the lifestyle older generations have grown accustomed to.

Marketing to Millennials

Understanding this generation's unique and distinct demands is a priority for marketers because as the general population matures, Millennials will replace Boomers as the most influential market segment.

Not only will they be big, they'll be fragmented and difficult for marketers to reach. Because Millennials are used to personalization and customization, they feel less need to conform in their consumer choices.

"They're less likely to embrace brands to show off. It's more about what this product or service can do for me right now," says David MacDonald of Environics.

Millennials suffer from a collective case of "technological ADD," he says. They watch TV, send instant messages and surf the web at the same time. It's difficult for traditional media like television to hold their attention because it doesn't operate at the pace Millennials expect, rendering traditional advertising ineffective. "It's becoming increasingly challenging for marketers to target this generation because they're like a herd of cats," MacDonald says.

Understanding the Millennial mind -- its penchant for connectivity and customization -- has more resounding cultural ramifications than selling shampoos and sneakers. Every segment of society will be swept along in the "Millennial tsunami" as members of the generation interpret and interact with the world using the latest technological trends.

As a result, marketers, employers and demographers are trying to pin down what drives the Millennials, a paradoxical generation that is both more globally-connected and more self-absorbed.

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