Micro-celebrity can be ascribed to people well-known in certain subcultures, often through the production of celebrity media about them. For example, a tech blog published paparazzi photos of the late Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt drinking coffee in Palo Alto; similar candid shots from Mark Zuckerberg's honeymoon ended up in Us Weekly. A paparazzi photo of someone marks them as a celebrity, or at least someone to pay attention to. While micro-celebrity is ascribed to people who are recognizable from online memes, such as the costumed super-fan "Tron Guy" or internet karaoke star "Numa Numa kid," high-status micro-celebrities in the tech scene are those with significant business or technological accomplishments, such as Gary Vaynerchuk and Kevin Rose. An ascribed micro-celebrity is not just someone popular, but someone treated with the celebrity-fan relationship of distance and aggrandizement.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 276