How to Become Famous in Ten Years' Time

I can't really be bothered to analyse the collective insanity that allowed frigid sex-tapist Paris Hilton and confused slab of staring meat Peter Andre to become the Marilyn Monroe and James Dean of the past decade. It's almost 6PM on a Tuesday and I'd rather get home early because Kim and Kourtney took Miami on Sunday and Project Free TV is finally letting me watch it. I'm guessing that you're not too interested in that, either. If you've clicked onto this post, you're probably currently existing at such a low rung on the fame ladder that don't even have any mutual Facebook friends with Alexa Chung. You're not bothered about the past. It can hold no glory for you. You feel like the era of easy fame is tailing off and you're desperately chasing behind it.

The important question is what's next? How are you supposed to make yourself or your kid famous in the next ten years? According to all the experts I spoke to, by following this foolproof route to stardom. STEP 1: FIND SOMETHING WEIRD YOU ARE RELATIVELY GOOD AT

An example of Machinima.

Oh, you've been playing guitar since you were six? And now you want to be a rock star? Forget it. And forget achieving celebrity status through any kind of acting or writing skills, too. It's not that you definitely suck, it's just that there are far too many people like you doing those things already (also, you probably suck).

So here's what you do: You go on the internet, where all the weirdos live, and find a specific group of those weirdos to exploit. Instead of trying to gain social traction with six suburban goth kids sat on a wall near the local library, you now have an audience of hundreds of thousands of goth kids from all over the world to impress, and they are all hanging out in the same places online. Figure out what you're good at, find those places and voila: you've found the niche that is going to launch you on the road to fame.

Figuring out what you're good at might seem difficult, but it could be anything from biting your toenails to solving the Rubik's Cube on a pogo stick or creating Minecraft parodies of "Gangnam Style", like YouTube celebrity Jordan Maron. Maron, whose YouTube name is Captain Sparklez, is one of the gamers signed to Machinima – a growing YouTube network so large that Google decided to invest $32 million (£20 million) into it last May. Philip Debevoise, Machinima's co-founder, and his half-brother spent the early 00s discovering this whole community of gamers and animators who, instead of going through the whole computing and rendering process, had manipulated games like World of Warcraft, Fifa and Call of Duty to create web series starring the characters of those games. The movement already had a name – "Machinima" – and a registered .com address, which they bought with the idea of "creating MTV for the video game generation".   "When we started, everyone would dismiss our product as 'too niche to generate interest'. And we went on to reach one million viewers, ten million viewers and 280 million viewers," he told me during his recent stay in London. "So now, even within our niche community, there is a variety of games – the shooters, the FPG, etc. Their audiences haven't crossed, while at the same time, they create their very own stars. I think that’s what'll happen in the future – celebrities will grow within their own communities." STEP 2: STAY NICHE

Don't let your burgeoning popularity trick you into thinking you're ready to branch out just yet. You're not a polymath, stay in your fucking hole.

It sounds kind of sappy and old-fashioned, but Debovoise believes the key to success is staying true to your audience, and I don't think he's wrong. "As things grew for our company, people started seeing a multi-channel network they thought they could copy. Those who remained niche are doing very well. Trying to build a community across many different genres like fashion and sports and gaming – I'm not too convinced about that. It worked for us that we're building a brand rather than a network."

Wondering what staying true to your brand means? Think of the time Geri Halliwell thought it was a good idea to go solo, or when Damien Hirst began putting animals in formaldehyde to decorate expensive restaurants. Do the exact opposite. STEP 3: TRICK PEOPLE INTO IDENTIFYING WITH YOU

You're nobody until people both hate and love you, and the way a lot of minor celebrities have achieved that in the past is by either sleeping or arguing with other minor celebrities. However, that technique is redundant now, mostly because the internet exists and everyone on it is either fucking or fighting. No one's running down to Dorothy Perkins to buy the red polyester mini-dress they saw their favourite cam-girl wearing.

But humans will always be animals driven by primal instincts, which begs the question: In normal life, what comes after you fuck or fight someone? Yes, complete emotional collapse! You're going to have to follow the Tila Tequila path, broadcast your psychotic breakdown on the internet and then collapse into the arms of your online community. Hopefully the niche you've chosen is one that has an emotional hivemind that mirrors the one possessed by the mainstream: Justin Bieber and One Direction fans praying for each other, giving each other virtual bear hugs, soppy, Christian-lite fucking wimps posing as an excuse for youth culture.

Anyway, during our conversation Philip Debevoise recalled the time one of Machinima.com's stars was finally able to quit his job and start working on his channel full time: "He uploaded a video, telling the community about it and he began to tear up. I was unsure about how the viewers were going to respond, but they were amazing. They were like, 'You go man! Fantastic!' We can’t wait to see more of your stuff!'" STEP 4: DON'T BE A LUDDITE

It's safe to say that, even if Facebook and Twitter don't become entirely obsolete, they'll at least have transformed so radically in ten years' time that they'll barely resemble their 2013 selves. According to trends forecaster and editor of LS:N Global James Wallman, in ten years "people will look back to our gentle times the same way we remember when TV said goodnight at midnight and work ended when you switched off a PC at 5.30 on Friday."

"By 2023, fame won't have anything to do with Megan Fox types posing for the covers of magazines. It'll be a co-created, trans-media, reality-TV game you 3D-print in your living room and download to your Google glasses." Which, to me, sounds terrifyingly exciting and equally hard to picture, but I guess we'll all know what to do when the time comes.

STEP 5: KNOW WHEN TO QUIT YOUR SCENE

Here's what Adrian Read, publicist at INSIDE/OUT for Lady Gaga and other people whose lives you care about, said when I asked him to help make me fabulous by 2023:

"If the media obsession with things like hot! new! buzz bands! continues, I think pretty much the only way to get yourself noticed will be to premiere everything you make on a different 'tastemaker' blog at five-minute intervals on the day the critics vote for the BBC Sound of 2023 (from 4PM, to ensure maximum synchronisation between the UK and US). Make sure to promote each one with a suitably rubbish Twitter hashtag. You'd then need to begin premiering tracks from your difficult second album at 5PM to capitalise on the buzz before people forget about you. It'd be pretty hard to plan the next few steps but I'd pencil in the backlash for around 5.35PM and would imagine the band splitting around 7PM – before the first member launches their solo career to a largely nonplussed Twitter feed." Basically, people will get bored of you just as quickly as they grow to like you. It'd be good to have a back-up plan so that, when the time comes and your fame within your niche is at its peak, you can hit the ejector seat button and get the fuck out of your weird scene and start doing something the rest of the world actually gives a shit about. STEP 6: LEARN HOW TO MAKE CARS RUN ON WATER

Time to hang up your scrunchie and separate yourself from the mediocre artistes surrounding you by doing something of actual value with your life – even if that means you might have to invest in a tiny bit of elbow grease. I'm not saying you should become a banker – that's for people who describe themselves as "such a Samantha" and laugh at Asians for being Asian. There are some alternatives, though. James Wallman, for example, predicts that scientists will be tomorrow's celebrities: "We're at a turning point where old truths about capitalism, consumerism and even the cosmos feel bankrupt and broken. We're looking for new answers with a whole new set of questions, which makes science the ultimate fuel. If you want to be famous in ten years, work out how to make cars run on water."

And what about those who don't have that pithy scientific acumen to work out how to make water combustible? "TIME Magazine named "the protester" the person of the year in 2011, so that one's done. Maybe becoming a military general? If they'd ever got Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf on one of those reality game-shows, that would have been the day I started watching."

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So there you have it. It's all about finding a niche and deceiving people for as long as you can before they start to get sick of you, and then you do something of actual importance, so that they feel stupid for ever having doubted you.

Making people feel ashamed of themselves: that's what celebrity is for and even if the routes towards it are gonna be massively different, in essence the con remains the same.

Follow Elektra on Twitter: @elektrakotsoni

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