Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Celebrity

Kungen has a blog and posted about a gold making experiment. He did absolutely nothing, just stood idle in Orgrimmar, people came to him, opened trade and gave him 10-100G and some consumables. He made 1100G in an hour that way.

That's respectable amount of money, even for a goblin. I guess if I would stand in the middle of Orgrimmar, the only trade window I'd get would be accompanied by a "cud u giv me 10g PLZZZZ :DDDDD".

So what's his secret? He is a celebrity! Celebrity is someone who people talk about. He does not even have to be good at anything, just because other people talk about him, people talk about him. Well, there must be something that started the event, for Kungen it was world first, for Paris Hilton it was a media campaign.

Please note that Kungen did not 1-manned Naxx40, SWP or Maly25. There were other Ensidia members around and none of them get the same attention. Why? Because being celebrity is not about doing something spectacular. Being celebrity is about ... being celebrity.

Want to hear something really weird? The only reason I know that Kungen has a blog is that Larísa linked it. Why would I care about him? He is not (was not) in making gold, I'm not in premiere raiding, we live in different worlds, so I had no reason to seek material about or from him.

I have a feeling that most of his blog followers and all of the guys giving him gold are not premiere raiders wanted to get some tips about "when to use SW on Algalon" or "shall I prefer 1.3 def rating over 0.27 % fire res on Mimiron hard?". They were morons. Only morons care about celebrities, as celebrities never-ever give or teach them anything.

These morons believe that the celebrity is somehow "special" or "extra valuable" (instead of just "extra visible"), and if they are around them or even just talk about them, they get a piece of their "noble light". Obviously none of these make any sense, nor those who do them. The media that covers celebrities is called boulevard media. "boulevard" means "street" in French, referring to that these magazines are "street quality", just like the "street whores" and the homeless. The celebrity followers are a masterpieces of stupidity.

What does a goblin do if he sees a stupid? Takes his money! That's what this media does. They sell their magazines to the morons and also advertise extremely overpriced stuff with the celebrities, knowing that the morons want anything related to their stars.

So how could Kungen make 10K+/hour? He could offer "celebrity services" for these idiots.
  • One /hug 50G.
  • One /dance 100G.
  • One "/yell [idiot's name] is a great guy" 250G.
  • "Archavon raid with Kungen and 2 other Ensidia superstars! Screenshot where we are all around the dead boss with the stars included" 500G. (They need the 2 other Ensidias, 1 healer and 1 DPS or it would be a wipe as even Kungen can't one-man Archavon)
  • "Kungen boosts you in lowbie instance" 1000G.
  • "Kungen and 12 other Ensidia superstars raid with you Sarharion with 3 drakes up. Killshot included." 10000G
The morons would swarm into these "events".

What can I say? The celebrity industry is a great indicator of human stupidity. As long as you see a single magazine with nothing interesting inside just "someone did something trivial" and people buy it, you can be sure that you can be rich without a hard day's work.

PS: damn, I wanted this post for tomorrow, and did not checked the date. Not the first time I mess this up.

19 comments:

Jorad said...

""boulevard" means "street" in French, referring to that these magazines are "street quality", just like the "street whores" and the homeless."

Actually it means that these magazines could only be bought at the street corner and not with a subscription.

Larísa said...

Great suggenstions Gevlon! I doubt they'll ever follow them however, I can' seriously think they're short of gold... But the idea is fun.

Actually I stop by and read his blog now and then, not because I think I'll learn something from it, not because I think that his success somehow miraculously will infect me, but because it's quite entertaining. The guy actually has some kind of humor. There can be many reasons why you read a blog. Everything isn't about utility.

Carra said...

That suggestion made me laugh... Until I figured out that yes, selling Kungen loves x screenshots would actually work. People would definately buy that...

Anonymous said...

I had heard of Kungen a while ago but didn't know who he was , ofc I had known of Nihilum though,mostly through members of my guild talking about them and their awful raiding times.

I play in the same battlegroup as Magtheridon(EU) and the horde used to be awesome a few years ago ( I play as alliance) but with Nihilum and now the new guild lots and lots of fanbois roll onto Magtheridon to be close to their heroes and diluted the quality of horde in BGs so for that I thank them.

As for " Celebrity" I believe every realm has at least 1 person everyone knows and usually dislikes. I play on Nordrassil , there's 1 alliance person that everyone knows as the worst player and another person who writes alot on the forums like this trash http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9164117081&sid=1 who thinks he's the dogs bollocks.

I recently rolled an alt onto the newest EU realm Saurfang when it came out. It was pretty fun to be able to do instances as they were intended but that's another story, as a new realm nobody knows anyone else but after a few days there's people aiming to become the realm "celeb", not through raiding world firsts obviously.

Anyway going back to Nihilum there were and probably still are alot of rumours about that guild , gold buying , paying powerlevelers , IRL money etc etc so I can't see them worrying about ingame gold. As for the people that give Kungen gold they probably all think " WOW I gave him gold I hope he mentions me on his website "

Quicksilver said...

If you repeat to people for a sufficent amount of time:

"this guy is great, this guy is a star, everyone wants to be like this guy"

soon the 6 billion morons living on this rock are going to soon believe it. This is the main principle of advertizing: the inability of human minds to think for themselves and their vulnerable willingness to believe what others tell them to believe.

"The flock that needs a sheperd" in other words.

Problem is, these so called "role-models" are usually so poorly chosen.

Hence a poor allocation of funds as these stars get the money of morons and put it to no good use but their personal pleasure.

ZachPruckowski said...

At least in WoW the celebrities have to constantly re-earn their status. Paris Hilton and Tom Cruise can coast on one success for years. If Ensidia doesn't get the first kill on 25-man Algalon and Heroic:Alone in the Darkness, they'll instantly have co-equals in whoever beats them. If they fail to get one of World First Argent Coliseum and World First Arthas, we'll have forgotten about them by this time next year.

It's about as meritocratic as celebrity gets, since there's no "resting on one's laurels" (skipping a dungeon altogether or taking a vacation from filming) and there's an objective skill measurement (downing the boss).

In a way, I think that people want to perceive themselves as part of something, as contributing towards a goal. They might be giving Kungen consumables so that they can say "Kungen downed Algalon, and did it with my Elixirs!", despite the fact that Ensidia no doubt has little trouble farming up their own consumables and mats.

Anonymous said...

Only morons care about celebrities, as celebrities never-ever give or teach them anything..


While I agree that celebrity worship is silly and someone stupid I do need to point out this error in reasoning Gevlon has made.

The above italicized quote is factually wrong. SOME celebtiries do give things. Actors, directors, etc give films. Musicians give music, etc. Some celebrities give even more... Stephen Hawking is a celebrity of sorts, we all know who he is.

The quote really should have read: Some celebrities never give or teach anything, and only morons care about them.

Eggalicious said...

This is especially true for most elections. Many voters just vote for the candidate of their party or even worse, they believe everything they see, read or hear in the media without regard to the truth. I'm sure all of you Obama voters can relate.

Jacob said...

Those last suggestions of instance boosts have already been done actually. A lot of highend guilds sold "clean" raidids (no deaths) with only KT left for 50k+ when naxx was still the top tier of raiding.

Some guilds offered achievement boosts. Sartharion 25+3 normally went for 25k.

This is not really about celebrities, I guess it's a interpretation for everyone to make. The top raiding guilds are always a bit of "superstars" on their server.

Rerun said...

Dear Gevlon
Reading your last tip i was very enthusiastic as it seems to be a more social based tip and did not imply those fuzzy "business" stuff like your other gold making tips.
Your tip however was a total disappointment. After reading the important parts i made a Kungen-warrior and placed him in Ogrimmar, but even after 1 1/2 hours i got no gold at all.
I think, as famous as you are, you should research your tips much better in the future or you will seriously jeopardise your stardom.

Markco said...

Rerun better be trolling... lol I laughed really hard at his comment anyway hehe.

I have the same problem as you Gevlon, if I stand in org I get "Can I haz gold?"

Dillion said...

This type of celebrity can be used to do other things as well. During the opening of AQ on Doomhammer US server a contest was put into place. Juggernaut (Horde) was our big raiding guild (6th in the world at the time). To get the doors opened Jugg made a contest called "Grinding Jugg Rep".

All the materials needed would be turned into a Jugg Representative and tallied with a confirmation email to sender. The rep equated to the sender getting favors from Jugg including, for the top 3 donating players, spots for the first run of AQ 40 and 25 with rolls for gear. For players that weren't in raid guilds this was a great benefit. As well the rep also include runs through the older content with players or items such as BoE purples.

As such, Doomhammer was 5th to open AQ and that was due to a reboot of the server. Had that not happened DH would have been 3rd.

Anonymous said...

The question is do I now care who Kungen is. Nope.

But it's funny how real life mirrors the virtual one...the problem is the biggest female celebs in virtual life...are dudes. LOL!

chaoskas said...

Well on my server they sold Sarth+3 for 10k Gold and another 5k for the mount. No loot.

They did this every week...

Rawhide said...

Gevlon,
aren't you paying your guild 5k a week to raid with them?
Where's the difference?
Is it celebrity? Or would the prices you suggest for raid boosting reflect the expected success rate of raiding with Ensidia?

Stupid Mage said...

Gevlon is one of the few celebrities who are giving back to the community.

Anonymous said...

I remeber a story that aired when the winter olymic's came here, it was about a nordic ski jumper from Great Britan, he had entered as the british team for the Calgary olymics. as that year there were no contenders at all for Great Britan, any how, he was not even good at skiing he was just an olympian, after coming in dead last on every event, he went home as a celebrity, and could earn 5000 pounds a day simply hobnoobing with people attending parties being a speaker what ever, and the only thing he had added to socity was he was in the olmpics... if only i could make 10000 dollars to go to some party and just be there...

Anonymous said...

Hahaaaa.
I just discovered your blog, and this post made me fucking laugh.
Looking forward to read further posts.

Amza said...

Hi, after reading your post and some of the reply's i can only say the following: I admire you, greedy goblin, for making this post! It was a pleasure reading about it.

Now, i'd like to say that, unfortunatlly, i had allso heard about this "KUNGEN" guy that is in insidia a while ago. A friend told me once:"Do you know who kungen is?" and i said "No...". After explaining to me that he's the the guild master of the best guild in the world (i think) i still didn't why he was the famous one. The fact that the Main Tank is and will be ALLWAYS kissed in the ass by the guild made me understand a bit why he was famous. Still, he was not alone in the raids, why didn't every1 elce got attention, why didn't the best dps got so many publicity.

Any mooron that knows how to read a blog about a prot warrior can tank! For example: if a 12 year old kid can understand that the prot warrior needs a def cap to reech and a certain ammount of balance in hes dodge/block/parry and HP, can tank with a certain spell rotation.

I am no Kungen; but i played a while prot warrior and its nothing that is EXTRAORDINARY hard to do when you get a decent gear in order to start raiding.

For me, Kungen doesn't mean anything. You take a shit, you name it kungen and what do you guess? You're famous. Imagine a fat guy with NO FUCKIN LIFE, (yes thats right, ENSIDIA PEOPLE THAT RAID HAVE NO LIFE! I had read a post made by a guy who was in Insidia and he told there that the TOILET BREAKS WERE MADE IN GROUP! No, you couldn't go to the toilet if it wasn't the rest of the group going to the toilet. That told, if you broke that rule, you we're GKicked instantly!) that knows how to do a rotation of spells in order to meintein aggro from the boss. HELLO? NOTHING EXYTING!

As a matter of fact, what i find facinating is how a guy can anticipate the other guys move in order to vanish the Hammer of Justice. Yes, that is amazing, no?

P.S:Hope you enjoyed my post and excuse me for the fustrating way to say this... i've got carried away at some point. Its annoying to see poeple are so retarded sometimes :)

Best wishes to you all!