The Wil Wheaton Effect (Part 3)

In this part I explore the motivation of Wil Wheaton's fans, specifically the many that use unusually vigorous language to comment positively about his blog. In analyzing the comments that readers have made, I have found three main motivating factors that would be a basis for their strong endorsements.

The first, of course, is content. Part 2 of this series explained how Wil's subject matter (such as Star Trek) is an important part of his popularity as his frequent use of sentimental language and themes. The question is why, in this age of distributed information and content, with multiple sources for similar information, would people read and comment so much about any one particular source. The answer is that people still want and depend upon core, centralized sources that they know are shared and referenced across their community. Consider anyone in the national government or national media as they refer almost exclusively to content from the New York Times and the Washington Post. The actual validity and importance of these two sources is not as important as people's perception that their peers consider these two newspapers as important and necessary. Being able to reference and support current writing in these papers then becomes a sort of shibboleth to let people know that you are part of a group and that you are plugged into its culture. Likewise, in the online writing community, people need core, supported sources and subjects, in order to establish and keep a connection with the community and prevent a Babel of subject matter.

The second motivating factor for Wil's readers is the concept of being associated with a famous person. Fame is something that a lot of people crave and if they cannot achieve it for themselves, then the next best thing is to work at being associated with someone who is already famous. The methodology for this scheme would be to get the attention of the famous person through nice (not scary) actions, such as lavish fawning over the famous person's work, words, and actions. The pipe dream is, of course, that the famous person will select you out of the thousands of fan to become their friend because of your extreme loyalty. (Personally, I think being friends with someone famous would have a lot of drawbacks and that the novelty would wear off quickly.)

The third motivating factor is also about making a connection to another person, but not because the other person is famous. Instead, it is because of a belief that there is some commonality or kindredness with the target. An obvious connection is geek-to-geek. This could be in the form of a crush, or just a feeling that you have found a person like you who would be fun to hang out with. This type of situation can occur with someone who has exposed their personality through writing or maybe an appearance on reality TV. It is in those situations where the reader or viewer has an opportunity to really "know" a new person much more than is likely to occur with the multitude of acquaintances all around them. As with the celebrity chasers, people bitten with this bug want to show the object of their attention how interested that they are in them.

I continue to read Wheaton's blog, but I have had to stop reading any of the readers' comments. The comments are just too transparently an attempt to curry favor instead of adding anything substantial to the discussion.