In And Then There’s This, Bill Wasik demonstrates how “viral culture” (or “viral marketing”) works and argues that for the most part, it is not accidental.

The most compelling bit of the book is the introduction, most of which is available in Google Books, where he argues that people writing blogs, tweeting and posting their photos and videos online are motivated by stardom.

All this is why I, for one, had no quibble with Time’s choice of “You” as the person of the year [in 2006]. Indeed, I will happily put “You” forward as the defining person of this whole random decade, which our hordes of cultural critics have redefined so often and so variously that it lacks an identity or even a name (the Zeros? THe Oughties?). But make no mistake: I am on to You.

…

You blog and photograph and record precisely so you can be read and heard and seen by others. You monitor and you scheme and you promote, just like the hit-addled corporate culture has been teaching you for years. Because when your words or actions or art are available not only to your friends but to potentially thousands or seen millions of strangers, it changes what you say, how you act, how you see yourself. You become aware of yourself as character on a stage, as a public figure with a meaning. You develop, that is, the media mind. You know exactly what you are doing.

(p. 12-13)

Part of his point is that people seek to be stars within their own subcultures, and it is easy for me to find examples of the same phenomena in different groups: a small group of people is at the center of the food blogging community in the same way a small group of people were at the center of the library blogging community. But both of my examples are of subcultures with a heavy publishing component: librarians for scholarly and professional communication, and foodies for cookbooks. I think the ‘cool kids’ dynamic would exist for us without the internet.

But the internet is what make’s Wasik’s book work, and what it is about. He talks about internet memes, and indie rock, and politics, all of which I consider to be subjects engaged with almost exclusively by internet users. On the one hand, it is refreshing to read about what happens on the internet as sort of closed system, as opposed to the usual theme of how much it is changing our lives. At the same time, meh, there is so much more to the world.

This actually turns out to be Wasik’s limp conclusion: that we need to “unplug” in order to keep “viral culture” from taking over our lives. I think he means I should swear off the whole genre of books-that-explain-the-internet for a while. I’m going to try.