IF ONLY dial-up networks hadn't been erratic and frustratingly slow in the past, millions more people would have gotten their 15 minutes in the spotlight sooner. The Net has been around for more than a decade, but initially, few had the patience or time to surf or download content on the Web because of the horrible connections. You also had to be some kind of a geek to figure out how to share your work in cyberspace. Nowadays, though, affordable high-speed connection and free and simple software on the Web are giving ordinary people the tools to create and then attract an ever-growing market of consumers.

The Net has more than enough space for everyone — pros and amateurs alike. Here, readers can choose between amateur blogs or professional news agencies for information. Music fans are also downloading tunes from obscure garage bands alongside Billboard Top 40 hits. The same goes for films, photos, poetry, anything that can be digitized and uploaded on the World Wide Web.

The Net offers a global audience that TV networks can't ever imagine having. Online tools like MySpace, ITunes, Flickr, and YouTube that match your blog, podcast, photos, and video with someone searching for similar content across the planet help you achieve your 15 minutes (and in the case of streaming webcam videos of yourself, more like 15 hours of fame). Producing content, therefore, isn't the only thing that is democratized today; so is celebrity. As Anderson states perceptively in his book The Long Tail: "The question is no longer how to be a star; it's more like what's stopping you?"

Hardly anything, if you ask the increasing number of online celebrities out there — filmmakers, photographers, writers, programmers, collectors — most of them famous only to fans of their respective subcultures and virtual communities. What we are seeing is the waning influence of the traditional media to make stars and how the notion of fame is being redefined altogether.

In the traditional or analog media, space for programming is limited to the number of hours in a broadcaster's day. Limited space puts limits on the number of stars that can be accommodated in this fixed universe. On the World Wide Web, however, infinite space means an infinite number of niches, with each one able to produce its own pantheon of celebrities. You and I may not make it to YES! Magazine, but that doesn't mean your network gaming skills or your encyclopedic knowledge of vintage clothing isn't going to make you a legend among peers. Some even graduate from fringe celebrity to full-blown stardom. Intimate video of hotel heiress Paris Hilton, for instance, was being downloaded in the millions even before she made it to Hollywood. There's also Bryanboy, the Pinoy blogger whose shopping, travel, and party exploits seem to interest even those in other countries. He's obviously light years away from being as luminous as the lovely Ms. Hilton, but that alone makes him living proof that anyone, really, can be a star.

AS OUR everyday reality becomes more and more fragmented and our lives increasingly atomized, people seek a spot in the media limelight as a way to share their experiences and reconnect with society. Disclosing your life in public validates your identity. Attracting attention is no longer juvenile, it's pretty much the norm. That's why the most popular formats on TV (reality TV) and sites on the Net today (blogs) happen to be ideal vehicles for public confession and exhibitionism. And the more socially invisible or ordinary one feels, the more intense the desire to reveal intimate secrets about one's self.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in today's popular reality-based talk shows and competitions. Here, celebrities and ordinary people share the same stage and let us, the audience, in on their tearful confessions. What's surprising (or no longer surprising) is the nature of information so willingly disclosed: infidelity, addiction, sexual orientation, to name a few. For sure, producers looking for a spike in the ratings coach the guests, and starlets looking to promote a film are instructed by their managers to make up some scandal. Yet, for the most part, these revelations are real.

Public confessions make for good ratings because viewers are generally voyeuristic. Just as people are hardwired to rubberneck in roadside accidents, viewers are transfixed by the brutal honesty of unedited and unscripted reality (or what producers work to make it seem to be). In this Age of Me, however, every minute detail is accorded almost the same attention as one would an important artifact of human history.

In the not-so-old days, diaries were the confessionals of choice for those who hoped to record their thoughts in private. But now the Me Generation prefers to broadcast its feelings. You can argue that memoirs are as public, but often these are written with the hope of being published at a much later age — even posthumously. For the Me Generation, a running account of the day's activities — in real time preferably — is the way to go. Check out the blogs on Friendster or the confessions on ABS-CBN's "Pinoy Big Brother" and "Dream Academy" reality shows (and its 24/7 versions online) and you'll see how naturally this comes to the youth of today.

YouTube software is also helping kids set up their personal reality shows. Some are even global hits. The intimate videos on display may seem disturbing, even perverse, to older generations, but what critics decry as exhibitionism, the Me Generation merely calls self-expression.

You won't detect the slightest embarrassment in such self-focused monologue. These TV contestants and bloggers often have nothing truly original or interesting to say, but that's beside the point. Having grown up in a popular culture that celebrates individualism and rewards the self-expressive, these youth (the majority are kids after all) don't find it difficult to exhibit themselves to strangers.