Famous 2.0

April 10, 2007 8:14 AM

Famousr is a sort of celebrity hot or not.
posted by cgc373 (57 comments total)

::sigh::
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 8:20 AM on April 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

Indeed.
posted by Rhomboid at 8:25 AM on April 10, 2007

Like other social constructs, celebrity varies with place and time, and it’s interesting looking at what’s considered correct and what isn’t, and trying to figure out the age and location of whoever did the classification (or, I suppose, the median age and the geographical epicentre of the population that did the classification.)

This musing provoked by my muttering “Hell yeah Kenneth Branagh is more famous than Séan Bean! Hell yeah Gary Cooper is more famous than Emma Watson!”
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 8:27 AM on April 10, 2007

It doesn't appear to be like hot or not, in that your answers don't seem to affect their fame rating, but rather, are graded against a pre-existing fame rating.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:29 AM on April 10, 2007

Daniel Craig more famous than Laurence Olivier?! Not a comment on their acting ability or even the fatuousness/fickleness of the public, but who among those that even watched the latest Bond movie could have named the actor? Maybe they are responding to the face rather than the name.
posted by DU at 8:30 AM on April 10, 2007

Séan Seán Bean. And he doesn’t even spell it like that. Mea maxima culpa.
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 8:30 AM on April 10, 2007

It doesn't appear to be like hot or not, in that your answers don't seem to affect their fame rating, but rather, are graded against a pre-existing fame rating.

which makes it somewhat more pointless than I even thought at first.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 8:30 AM on April 10, 2007

It's only been around for like a minute, but I think it's supposed to take into account your clicking and adjust its scores. But I dunno, I just thought it was kinda neat.
posted by cgc373 at 8:32 AM on April 10, 2007

I thought we were supposed to be rating celebrities by hotness, and the system was telling me I didn't know who was hottest. It would probably be right, though. I'd pick John Candy each time.
posted by Citizen Premier at 8:37 AM on April 10, 2007

So it's not possible to, say, vote up some random schlub?

...be great to pick some minor individual and mass-vote him/her up over, say, Brad Pitt.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:39 AM on April 10, 2007

Alex Baldwin > Charlie Chaplin???

Oh, now I see it, your 'level' is based on some type of TV analogy. Quiz obviously not meant for someone who reads books.
posted by mygoditsbob at 8:42 AM on April 10, 2007

Weaksaucr
posted by prostyle at 8:46 AM on April 10, 2007

If it matures along the lines that other, similar sites have done, it has potential to be an adequate time waster.
posted by Industrial PhD at 8:48 AM on April 10, 2007

To clarify, I was sighing at the existence of such a site. Not the fact that it was posted, per say.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 8:50 AM on April 10, 2007

Damnit, "per se." Stupid phonetics.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 8:52 AM on April 10, 2007

I went in thing it was literally a celebrity hot or not, and then I got pissed at it when it tried telling me Val Kilmer was better than Charles "Fuck'n" Bronson. The man sweats sex, I tell you.
posted by drezdn at 8:58 AM on April 10, 2007

BTW, the point is to guess who is more "famous", therefore reinforcing their famousness (Brad Pitt: 49 votes, Andy Richter: 30 votes. I vote that Andy Richter is "famousr", now he's got 31 votes, but I'm so so wrong). That's why it's called "famousr", and not whatever game you shlubs are making up.
posted by muddgirl at 9:00 AM on April 10, 2007

Is that the case, muddgirl? The about page seems to indicate he's using a fame tracking algorithm based on press mentions and movie roles, rather than votes on the site itself to determine who is more famous.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:21 AM on April 10, 2007

Helen Mirren more famous than Olivier?

THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!
posted by psmealey at 9:23 AM on April 10, 2007

jacquilynne - you're probably right. I assumed this: "calculating a secret “fame rank” from a variety of data sources" meant "I don't want to reveal how lazy a programmer I am."
posted by muddgirl at 9:24 AM on April 10, 2007

Without doing any research at all, I'd place bets that the "secret fame rank" is the "number of hits on Google" or possibly "number of hits on Google News", since it's heavily weighted toward those celebrities currently making headlines and/or movies.
posted by medialyte at 9:40 AM on April 10, 2007

What the hell? I clicked on a person and it told me "Cheaters never prosper". I didn't cheat you bastard!

Also, best run = 14.
posted by the other side at 9:44 AM on April 10, 2007

mygoditsbob writes "Quiz obviously not meant for someone who reads books."

Well, it's based on who is more famous. It's not "for" any particular person; fame is made up of the opinions of many people. There were folks who I guessed wrong on; that doesn't mean the quiz isn't for me, it's that I don't know some famous folks.

Rephrased: If it was a quiz which was only for people who would get every question right, it wouldn't be a quiz, because everyone would score a perfect score.
posted by Bugbread at 9:45 AM on April 10, 2007

medialyte writes "it's heavily weighted toward those celebrities currently making headlines and/or movies."

I dunno. Lily Tomlin beat the guy in the Sopranos, and as far as I know, he's in a successful current show, and she's not doing much.

Google hits, I could believe (because that includes past and present), but "current headlines/movies", not so much.
posted by Bugbread at 9:46 AM on April 10, 2007

jesus effing christ, seriously?
posted by nathancaswell at 9:47 AM on April 10, 2007

the other side writes "What the hell? I clicked on a person and it told me 'Cheaters never prosper'. I didn't cheat you bastard!"

I had that happen when I hit "back" on the browser. Maybe you accidentally went to the previous page (Firefox gesture, or accidentally hitting the backspace key, or the like?)
posted by Bugbread at 9:49 AM on April 10, 2007

Yeah. Seriously.
posted by the other side at 9:49 AM on April 10, 2007

Bugbread: I'm pretty sure I didn't hit back. Maybe my browser's being dumb as it sometimes is, though.
posted by the other side at 9:50 AM on April 10, 2007

nathancaswell writes "jesus effing christ, seriously?"

Yes. Lily Tomlin really did beat the guy in the Sopranos.
posted by Bugbread at 9:53 AM on April 10, 2007

Hey, here's a tip.

Choose Jenna Jameson, especially when an old-timer comes up. She's more famous than Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster or Dennis Hopper. It takes a real landmark (Orson Welles, for instance) to beat them golden globes.

Hurrah for American culture!
posted by imperium at 10:01 AM on April 10, 2007

I thought we were done with Web 2.0R
posted by ninjew at 10:07 AM on April 10, 2007

There are some people like Olivier and Chaplin who've entirely left the world of "famous" and moved into historical figures.

Also, if Alex Baldwin is suposedly more famous than Chaplin, why can't I imagine someone ever making a film simply called "Baldwin"?

on preview: press clippings and movie roles? So this isn't "famousr or not", but "who is working as an actor and has more press releases".

I mean, it claimed that some starlet was more famous than Leonard Nimoy. Leonard Nimoy!

Basically, it's broken. If they had programed a famous or not which allowed the audience to vote, it would have been interesting. Otherwise, it's pretty pointless.
posted by jb at 10:08 AM on April 10, 2007

31 in a row- I got tripped up on Don Cheadle vs. Chevy Chase (I picked Cheadle because he's more active of late). Yeah, whatever algorithm used seems kind of flawed; the "famous" element should be "if you randomly sampled N people in the US/World, how many would be able to name the actor/actress in this picture?" I highly doubt there was a sophisticated sampling/polling done ahead of time, and it doesn't appear that it's doing live adjustments either.

You could probably whip up a scraper to start hitting this site, and every time it got a right or wrong answer to add the two stars to a table with the higher/lower value. After a few hundred hits, you could automatically have a sorted list of "most famous" to "least famous", and essentially never be "wrong".
posted by hincandenza at 10:14 AM on April 10, 2007

I actually like the idea of the "Who is 'That Guy'" page, but when you're wrong, it doesn't tell you the right answer!
posted by Bugbread at 10:17 AM on April 10, 2007

Oh, and apparently I should have put my 31 streak in when it ended, since I didn't get added to the "best of the day". Hmph!
posted by hincandenza at 10:18 AM on April 10, 2007

I've been using the opposite algorithm: "If you randomly asked N people who $(actor's name) is, would they be able to tell you?" Don Cheadle, for instance, doesn't have a lot of name recognition.
posted by Plutor at 10:20 AM on April 10, 2007

Huh- just got 34 in a row, and it still didn't add it to the high scores. What lame-osity!
posted by hincandenza at 10:20 AM on April 10, 2007

Oh come on, I just got 94 in a row (I lost on Ziyi Zhang and Jonathan Taylor Thomas), and still *nothing* on the high score list. Fuck you, famousr!!!
posted by hincandenza at 10:36 AM on April 10, 2007

I don't get 'Who's That Guy'. I recognize quite a few of those people, and could name many movies that they're in, or more likely, many TV shows, but they never appear on the list. Tia Carrere, for example, I associate most closely with Wayne's World, which wasn't on her list. For others, animated features appear on the list. Because, really, I'm going to recognize by picture that someone was in Toy Story?
posted by jacquilynne at 10:56 AM on April 10, 2007

annoyingr
posted by thinkpiece at 11:14 AM on April 10, 2007

Well, it's definitely not based on how famous in the world, since it said Chow Yun Fat was less famous than some American.
posted by jb at 12:11 PM on April 10, 2007 [2 favorites]

which makes it somewhat more pointless than I even thought at first.

None more pointless.
posted by MikeMc at 1:00 PM on April 10, 2007

hincandenza's 94 in a row is making me cry. I got a few in the 30s, but godamighty, man! How in hell?
posted by cgc373 at 1:38 PM on April 10, 2007

Man, I hate Web 2.0 names.
posted by graventy at 2:31 PM on April 10, 2007

How the fuck is Denise Richards more famous then heather locklear?
posted by delmoi at 2:42 PM on April 10, 2007

You'll love Web 2.5 names, where they get rid of all the vowels.

Fmsr.com

Me, I'm looking forward to Web 3.0. No consonants. I'll throw an updated link to aoue.com here on eaie.com. And if you don't like it, you can call me out on ea.
posted by Bugbread at 2:43 PM on April 10, 2007

Would your username be uea, then, bugbread?
posted by cgc373 at 2:53 PM on April 10, 2007

Also, I think it's funny that you used the abbreviated form MeTa, minus consonants, for your callout arena. Shows your status as part of the elite. Kudos!
posted by cgc373 at 2:54 PM on April 10, 2007

Jesus, that's a creepy picture of Vincent Gallo.
posted by EarBucket at 3:57 PM on April 10, 2007

There are non-creepy pictures of Vincent Gallo?
posted by thecaddy at 4:21 PM on April 10, 2007

Also: it's not the "2.0" I object to, but calling new websites "beta" that really drives me up the damn wall. There you go: substantiative proof that Google has done evil.
posted by thecaddy at 4:36 PM on April 10, 2007

Also, if Alex Baldwin is suposedly more famous than Chaplin, why can't I imagine someone ever making a film simply called "Baldwin"?

This reminds me of one thing about a video rental place in Helsinki. On the ground floor they have the recent hit films shelved in order of popularity, and also some a bit less recent films arranged roughly by genre.

On the underground floor they have all the old films, including a lot of VHS tapes. Not only do they have a finer-grained selection of genres, they also have one wall arranged by who the big star in the movie is. There they have the "Al Pacino" shelf, the "Salma Hayek" shelf and the "Arnold Schwarzenegger" shelf.

And also, the "Baldwin" shelf.
posted by Anything at 4:44 PM on April 10, 2007

Wow, impressed with the 94. It probably didn't save your score because you didn't put in initials though.
posted by lubujackson at 4:55 PM on April 10, 2007

The basic problem with this site is that it's bullshit.
posted by delmoi at 6:05 PM on April 10, 2007

How the fuck is Denise Richards more famous then heather locklear?

Did they actually use that as a comparison? I mean even to someone who abhors celebrity gossip, that's kind of uncool.
posted by psmealey at 6:09 PM on April 10, 2007

jb, I'm fairly certain a movie called "Baldwin" would be hailed as a sign of the apocalypse.
posted by arha at 7:44 PM on April 10, 2007

I find "easyr" and "hardr" to be inordinately funny.
posted by danb at 7:57 PM on April 10, 2007