Over at Mediageek, Paul reckons:

Fame, celebrity and mass audiences are the products of inequality. They're the product of a monopolization of the tools and resources for making media. When there were only 3 TV networks, anyone appearing on one of them immediately became a star. It's even sort of true with 150 cable networks. But it becomes less true with 10,000 or 10,000,000 channels.

Personally, I have no use for stars or celebrity. If expanding the accessability of media tools creates more voices and chips away at the power of celebrity then I'm all for it. Let's recognize that democratizing the tools of communication means eroding our own inflated egos.