Mumbai, October 01: With the advent of social networking, podcasting and instant messaging comes instant fame as well. A host of personalities have become overnight celebrities in a matter of few tweets.
One daring sentence, promising to bare all, is more than enough to set the ball rolling. It doesn’t matter if the cause is just, honourable, or ignoble, it promises to make the person a celebrity overnight. It is a phenomenon that is rapidly becoming quite a trend in India too.
Affairs to remember
Not long ago, celebrities, models and aspiring actors would pay heavy sums to Public Relations (PR) agents to circulate stories of their alleged affairs in the media and hook-ups with popular stars. In the bargain, the person in question would be associated with the popular star and find a base with the star’s fans. That was quite a popular trend in the ’80s and the ’90s. But with the new millennium, all that has changed drastically.
One tweet only
In the post-Twitter era, a few tweets or rather, one tweet is all it takes for a person to become an overnight household name. The best example of overnight fame on Twitter is model turned actor, Poonam Pandey. The Mumbai-based model became an overnight sensation when she tweeted that she was willing to strip and run a lap around the Wankhede stadium, if Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his Men in Blue won the World Cup.
That was on April 2, 2011, and as history stands witness, Poonam became a household name in a matter of days. She landed a role in an action-based reality series, was offered over Rs 2 crore for a strip in another reality show. And now has over a dozen Bollywood films in her kitty. Top Bollywood producers want to cash in on this newfound fame and cast her against popular A-listers. She even managed to buy a Mercedes for her dad. And all that was made possible with one tweet, with fame and fortune following suit.
In fact, during the India-England series where Team India took a beating in all forms of the game, the Test series, the ODIs and the T20 match, Poonam was busy ‘inspiring’ Team India with frequent tweets and pictures of herself. In fact, she managed to woo and add over 50,000 followers on Twitter during the India-England ODI series alone.
-Courtesy: Mid-Day