Today, fame can come fast -- faster than people can possibly imagine, and in ways they could never expect.
In the span of a week, Alexandra Wallace went from being an unknown UCLA political science student to vilified dropout, thanks to a politically incorrect YouTube diatribe about Asian students in the library that went unexpectedly viral.
Read also: Alexandra Wallace to Withdraw From UCLA Over Asian Rant
As Wallace’s video made the rounds last week, so did one by Rebecca Black. The 13-year-old’s auto-tune song "Friday" has received more than 35 million hits and turned her into a phenom that Billboard figures is earning about $25,000 a week from track sales of the surprise Amazon and iTunes hit. It also got her savaged by critics. Billboard called her song "straight out of Auto-Tuned hell," and Rolling Stone called it an "unintentional parody of modern pop."
The list gets longer and longer: Ted Williams, the homeless “man with the golden voice,” singing sensation Susan Boyle and “Star Wars Kid” Ghyslain Raza, the unfortunate viral pioneer who was traumatized by his sudden fame but now seems to have recovered.
Most aren't near ready to handle the instant fame. For every Justin Bieber -- who was discovered on YouTube -- there’s an Alexandra Wallace. (Story continues after video.)
"I doubt if anybody puts something up there (on the internet) thinking they are going to be vilified for it, and that millions are going to watch it and it's going to end up on CNN,” Robert Gore, program director for the California School of Professional Psychology Ph.D. program in clinical psychology, told TheWrap. “I don't know that people have adapted to the kind of sudden mobbing that can happen internationally where a casual angry rant could dog you for the rest of your days."
Ted Williams, who was discovered after someone videotaped him and posted him talking on YouTube, ended up in Los Angeles, on the "Dr. Phil" show. And then in rehab.
And the whole world -- at least the whole wired world -- knows. While in Los Angeles, he was followed by paparazzi and featured on television shows. All from a YouTube video.
One of the very first viral videos was 2002's high school student Raza, who wielded a golf-ball retriever as if it were a Jedi light saber. The clip, which was uploaded without his permission, has been viewed more than a billion times and was parodied on "Arrested Development" and "Family Guy."
Raza is now a law student in Quebec and has seemingly moved on, but he was so traumatized that he had to switch high schools and later filed a lawsuit against the kids who posted the video.
Scottish spinster singer Susan Boyle may have launched her musical career on "Britain's Got Talent," but it was YouTube, where her performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" ended up, that got her international attention.
