Just as mainstream celebrity media treats celebrities as characters to be written into often fabricated plotlines, gossip blogs of the day, like Valleywag, fit micro-celebrity personas into preexisting narratives and character arcs that reflected both long-standing tropes about celebrity and the meritocratic mythology of the technology scene. Valleywag is one example of how celebrity was ascribed to individuals and how the behavior of people within the tech scene was publicly policed by and judged against the values of Silicon Valley.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 338