While there has been a great deal of analysis of celebrity culture from the perspective of fans and celebrity watchers, there has been little attention to how fame is experienced by celebrities, presumably because celebrities are difficult to access. Those celebrities who speak openly about their negative experiences with fame are considered ungrateful if they complain about the consequences of something they presumably wanted to achieve. Here I will describe the experience of micro-celebrity, what it is like for its practitioners, and its positive and negative effects. While we cannot know if this perspective can be extrapolated to the views of mainstream celebrities, we can presume that at least some of these experiences may apply to many other people who live their lives in public.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 375