While internet fame is pretty cool, real world fame may be cooler yet.

So, the unique-visitors to this site took a bit of a leap upon the blogging of my last post. Something to the tune of a 10,000% increase to my average daily unique site views.

It's all very strange to me, you see. I'm not really a part of any major circle of web-users, in real life. Most of my friends, and I hate to say this, aren't terribly web-saavy; and the ones that are aren't the type to check social bookmarking sites and whatnot.

The basic chronology of it all goes like this: A short time after posting it, I was told by a fellow design enthusiast to post it to stylegala under the public news, which I did. A cool couple hundred hits later into the evening, and I was thinking to myself how nice it is that people are enjoying this list, and emailing me about it and whatnot.

Then came the social networking and bookmarking. At various points throughout the day, I was spotted up as #1 on Digg.com, #1 on Spurl.com, and #2 on Delicious. Many thanks, by the way, to all the bookmarkers, commenters, and even those who criticized. Without criticism, there can be no improvement, and believe me when I say that it's all appreciated.

In the long run, I'm really happy about all of this. Ecstatic, even. At first I felt sick to my stomach (in a good way, if that's at all plausible), having this kind of attention, but it sort of dawned on me later that night that it's not quite as cool to be internet-famous as is it to be real-world famous. Let me explain.

Internet fame doesn't bring one free drinks at the bar the night thereof. Nor does it get one sweet body shots from sexy looking ladies. It didn't even get my beard complemented.

Real world fame doesn't require you to buy another stick of RAM for the moderately illegal server that hosts you to keep people from hate mailing you.

Internet fame doesn't prevent you from getting called into work for one of your part time jobs only a few hours after you've managed to go to sleep. It doesn't present you with the opportunity to turn them down with "Bitch please, do you know who you're talking to? I'm famous. You can deal with my agent".

I can't talk to my non-techsaavy real-world friends about internet fame. "Oh" they'll say, "so your site got big? that's pretty cool, I guess. Hey, did you hear *soandso* got arrested spraypainting the *soandso* building downtown last week? he's famous, man".

I can't talk to my dad about internet fame. He's one of the old-guy types who thinks he's good with computers just because he gets spam mail about all-inclusive vacation resort scams and thinks that he's got an insider working for him. He always puts things in perspetive of money. "Well, Phil, how much money did that make you? Are you out of debt yet?"

Real world fame gets you bitches and hos and movie deals and record contracts and magazine covers and sellout crowds at the Astoria and a 6-figure book-signing deal and a daytime talk show when you get all washed up at the end of it all.

Internet fame gets you one real nice thing, though.

An ego stroke. A good old fashion pat on the back. "You done good, kid". Thanks, anthropomorphized internet, thanks a lot.

Thanks for the comments: Bogdan Manolache, Mark Lloyd, Nate Cavanaugh, Fritz, Nick Gushlow, Some guy, Felipe, Sean, Don Ray, Andrew, Dave, Flashy flash flash, uninspired, Hayley, Luka, Christopher, Sean.

Thanks for the links (I got some 1280 of them from the post. Thanks to all of you, whether you're mentionned or not): Madewith/Onelinestudio, who started the whole Digging of my site, Kevin Rose, who is totally awesome, Fosfor Gadgets, Morguefile, Bifurcated Rivets. Wired.com.

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