Posted
on January 22, 2016
Back
in the first half of the Twentieth Century, to be a “star” you
had to be discovered by someone in a Hollywood studio – and there
were only a handful of those! – and then you were carefully
“groomed” to have the right look and the right name and the right
lifestyle...
And THEN you got a multi-movie contract and you got to see
your name in lights!
And
the movie studios continued to weigh in on every aspect of your life.
There was a lot of pressure to keep up and particular sort of image.
Needless
to say, very few people became stars, and a lot of people who hoped
and dreamed of making it big at Hollywood never did.
To
become a musical star, you generally had to pay your dues with years
of touring and playing anywhere you could, hoping again to be
discovered by some big record label. Most music stars, back then,
weren't all that young – even if they got their start of performing
when they were kids.
Now,
flash forward to today, you can become a star in a lot of different
ways! Maybe even when you are pretty darned young.
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| Xiamara Jennings |
Today
we celebrate the birthdays of teens who are considered “stars” of
sorts: Enya Umanzor, Vine star, turns 17; Damian Frackiewicz and
Ollie Munro, You Tube stars, both turn 16; Silento, a rapper whose
single went viral on Vine and You Tube, tuns 18; Ricky Garcia, a pop
singer who competed on The X Factor, turns 17; Xiamara
Jennings, a pop singer who got into a girl group based on her videos
released on YouTube and Instagram, turns 18; and Avery Winter, a pop
singer who competed on America's Got Talent, turns 14.
 |
| Ollie Munro |
 |
| Enjajaja (Enya Umanzor) |
 |
| Damian Frackiewicz |
 |
| Silento |
 |
| Avery Winter |
 |
| Ricky Garcia |
That's
a lot of stars...(that I've never heard of)!
Let's
look at some of these paths to artistic expression and possible
celebrity:
YouTube
is probably the most famous video-sharing website. Created in 2005,
it was bought by Google less than two years later for more than a
billion dollars!
In 2014, about 300 hours' worth of new videos were uploaded to YouTube EVERY MINUTE!
I'm not sure how many videos are on YouTube, but I read that billions of videos are watched per week. (Billions!)
A lot of people are getting exposure for their ideas, their art, their acting, their dancing, or their music – and a fair number of people are getting paid for this stuff! YouTube pays out millions of dollars per year to “partners” (people who have registered to upload videos to the website), and an amazing number of people are earning six-figure incomes from their videos on what is – remember! – a FREE video channel!
Vine
is the “Twitter” of video sharing services. Users share
six-second-long looping video clips. (Twitter actually owns Vine, by
the way, acquiring the service just before its official launch.)
Instagram is a mobile phone-sharing, video-sharing, and social networking service. Users can upload photos and short videos (up to 15 seconds). This service was purchased less than two years after it was launched for about a billion dollars.
Competition
TV shows, including The
X Factor
and America's
Got Talent,
aren't especially designed for youngsters—but in many cases their
doors aren't closed to kids and teens, either. (And some are,
including the popular So
You Think You Can Dance,
which requires competitors to be 18 to 30 years old.)
Some popular competition shows have spin-offs, or “junior” versions, designed for teens. (I'm looking at you, Project Runway Junior!)
And
here are some more ways to share one's art and possibly gain fame
and/or fortune:
Facebook
is one of the biggies, of course. Started in 2004, in has more than a billion active users!
Twitter
is the other biggie. Users can send and read messages that are up to
140 characters long. Remember, a character is a letter, a number, a
symbol, or a bit of punctuation.
Tumblr
is a microblogging platform. Users can upload stories or jokes or
poems, photos, GIFs, links, mp3s, videos, or whatever they want.
Tumblr has hundreds of millions of blogs!
- Wattpad is a writing community with a website and a mobile app. New writers, published writers, and undiscovered writers are all given an equal chance.
- Fan fiction (fanfic) is fiction about characters or settings from someone else's fiction. In other words, a fan of the Twilight books writing original stories about Bella and Edward is writing fanfic. There are some popular fanfic websites for sharing and reading and commenting on fanfic.
- E-books are free to upload to places like Amazon, although to sell your work, you will need an ISBN number, and that costs money.
- DeviantArt is one of the largest art communities. Members often interact, offering support and critique of others' art.
- Regular blogging (rather than all the “microblogging” I was talking about above), of course!
Because
of the internet, artists of all kinds have way more access to
millions, even billions, of people. BUT so do all the other
artists-of-all-kinds, of course! It's still tough to get noticed
among so many. Still, there are more people in the world than ever,
and more ways to reach people with your words / pictures / ideas /
music / dancing / whatever than ever, as well. So go, create, share,
and become a star!
Also
on this date:
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