The Shadow Editors: When Did Perez Hilton Become More Famous Than Paris Hilton And Why Were We Not Informed?

Tom Scocca: Is your Fashion Week over?

Choire Sicha: Is it ever!

Tom Scocca: Did anyone there notice that Perez Hilton is now more famous than Paris Hilton?

Choire Sicha: I'm not sure if anyone besides the publicists noted that!

Tom Scocca: But the publicists showed they'd noticed?

Choire Sicha: Well there is some anecdotal evidence, such as the post-show release from the horrible gay Canadian twins of "DSquared," in which they touted the appearance of Nicky Hilton and… Perez Hilton.

Choire Sicha: Also anecdotally? He was everywhere… and Paris Hilton was in, like, Stuttgart and Venice? She was actually busy being sued for canceling appearances. Her big fashion week headline? "HILTON FACES CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT OVER ALLEGED EUROPE NO-SHOW."

Tom Scocca: We spend all our time second-guessing publications' output. Time to second-guess the input, isn't it? Shadow Assignment Editors! WHY ALL OF YOU NO HAVE?

Choire Sicha: That is a good point. They were eager, historically, to cover Paris, but they are exceedingly less eager to cover Perez. In part, I think because he has a platform via which to castigate, undermine and rebut? I think publications dislike both Hiltons equally. But they were never afraid of Paris, because she had no editorial product of her own.

Tom Scocca: "Both Hiltons," you say. Apologize to Nicky!

Choire Sicha: Oh I would never. Although! Hilton mania reached such a fever pitch not long ago that I was conscripted to actually write a Nicky Hilton potential cover story for a large New York-based magazine. (One that fortunately never came to… fruition.) And by "not long" I believe I mean 2005 or 2006. Even I, as much as I love the celebrity industrial complex, found this a bit suspect.

Tom Scocca: Possibly Nicky is the Interesting Hilton. At least, there's still a job opening for that slot. But: Perez Hilton is a bigger name that Paris Hilton. Am I the only person who is freaked out by this?

Choire Sicha: I have a metric for you! Paris Hilton on Twitter: 631K followers. Perez Hilton on Twitter: nearly 1.5 million followers.

Tom Scocca: It is like when George W.S. Trow wrote about how contestants on Family Feud were trying to guess what the survey participants had guessed that the average height of an American woman was. Perez Hilton has derived greater fame from Paris Hilton than Paris Hilton had herself derived from being famous for famousness' sake.

Choire Sicha: That is accurate, I think. He leeched it out of her in a really fantastic way! And often he did it by going where she went, and doing what she did… except not by revealing his chest and being what a delusional teen boy would think of as "being sexy." Somehow he didn't need to! That credit goes to his editorial product. Unfortunately, Paris Hilton's editorial product is a failing, disastrous MTV reality show.

Tom Scocca: I only have about 87 GB of open memory here, and that's not enough to hold all the scare quotes that need to go around the word "'["'(reality)'"]'" in that sentence.

Choire Sicha: Well sure. Here is another interesting bit of fact! Perez Hilton is having a very bad income week.

Tom Scocca: Why is that?

Choire Sicha: I do not know why? It may be just the general ebb and flow. But he is only receiving $28,000 worth of ad income this week. [UPDATE: According to the wonderful honcho of BlogAds, there were also some takeover sales this week, though in checking Perez's site I didn't see them. So $28,000 sounds like Perez's floor income. As in, that is basically what he found in quarters on the floor.] Often he rakes in upward of $50,000 a week. Math will tell you that that is $2.6 million a year. So he has only sold small ads this week; most weeks he has also sold ads up top, for $25,000 a week.

Tom Scocca: So what does this combination of fact and cultural observation give us? Who are the advertisers?
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Choire Sicha: Well, the advertisers this time of year, throughout the 4th quarter on the web, are typically entertainment products. Though he also often does well with music products, the end of the year always has an upsurge in movie and TV marketing.

Tom Scocca: What does "product" mean in this context?

Choire Sicha: Oh, you know, "Where the Wild Things Are" or "GI Joe," any kind of product.

Tom Scocca: (This "["{"con/text"}"]".)

Tom Scocca: I'm sort of surprised the chat program didn't turn some of that into emoticons.

Choire Sicha: There are many kinds of products! There is the Perez Hilton Music Tour. Which actually sounds kind of great? Says MTV: "Last-minute surprise act Little Boots hit the stage sans her band mates (they were stuck across town) and performed solo with only a piano to accompany her. She thanked Hilton with a run through a haunting cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill"… Self-proclaimed "filthy party band" Semi Precious Weapons killed it. "This is rock and roll – pull your f—ing tits out!" beckoned frontman Justin Tranter…""

Tom Scocca: YouTube.

Choire Sicha: Quite so.

Tom Scocca: So where are Perez's magazine covers?

Choire Sicha: Hmm. On the cover of what magazine would he move newsstand?

Tom Scocca: None! He is repulsive. Yet he is only the elaboration of the logic that put Paris Hilton on the covers.

Choire Sicha: Oh sure, except he doesn't have boobs.

Choire Sicha: Hmm, let me correct that.

Tom Scocca: Yes.

Choire Sicha: Well.

Choire Sicha: Less said the better.

Choire Sicha: I actually don't think Paris Hilton moved magazines either, besides perhaps Us Weekly, for a brief period. I wish Janice Min still worked in the industry right now, she could explain all of this in two sentences.

Tom Scocca: People don't like celebrities. It's more about people feeling compelled to honor the idea of celebrity.

Choire Sicha: But people also actively dislike celebrities. And where Perez succeeded is in being outrageously dislikeable! I think that is his secret.

Tom Scocca: That seems correct. It was a great crossover move to pit himself against whatsername, Carrie Pre-Op, Miss Culture-Wars Martyr of 2008. Or was it 2009?

Choire Sicha: Yes!

Tom Scocca: An incident in which the most substantive person involved was Donald Trump.

Choire Sicha: Yeeessss. That was wonderful for him. Also a great "news" "peg" for publications. Unfortunately for Perez, he will always have the sort of editorial product that announces that Jaclyn Smith is offing herself in Bulrgaria or something. Honduras. Whatever.

Tom Scocca: I don't even know what incident you're talking about.

Choire Sicha: Exactly! How would you! But every tween in Norte Americana does. Amusingly,this involved a bad reading of a Spanish language newspaper.

Tom Scocca: Death is the obstacle on the way to the perfect celebrity-news future. We are about 20 minutes away from being able to gossip about completely computer-generated avatars, which can do almost everything that our current celebrities can do, except for dying awkwardly.

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