James Norton
Turkish Delight: Pain, gain and Internet fame
Quite a lot, actually.
Early in November, a new superstar graced the Internet. Mahir, a previously unknown man from Izmir, Turkey, burst onto the Internet scene with a Web site that combined a shaky grasp of English grammar with an arguably hilarious quest to meet the women of the world, who he "invitated" to stay with him in Turkey.
Known colloquially as the "I Kiss You!!!!" site (after the page's title and oft-repeated catch phrase), Mahir's efforts caused a media sensation, and brought a huge number of visitors to his virtual doorstep.
A titanic ripple of grassroots publicity pushed tens of thousands of viewers onto Mahir's site until it was shut down on November 12, under somewhat mysterious circumstances. "This site got 295000 hits in one week during Mahirmania," proclaims the text at the bottom of the now desolate original site. Since the site's removal, it has been recreated by fans, who have additionally paid homage to the cult of Mahir by constructing dozens of sometimes elaborate tribute sites.
After the shutdown, an explanation surfaced, from Mahir himself: his original and completely ordinary site had been hacked, and modified to include the innuendoes that had proven so popular with its visitors. While explaining the bizarre hacking that helped make him a minor international celebrity, Mahir also asked a series of poignant questions about the world as a whole.
Among others, he asked:
This humanitarian appeal, coupled with his infinite cyber-kitsch value, helped catapult Mahir into the stratosphere of Internet fame.
"I was touched by the irony involved in the fact that Mahir's simple page managed to do what all of the corporations hopping onto the e-Commerce bandwagon could only dream of," said Leah Cunningham, Webmaster for The Official Mahir Webring. "[Also], that it was all powered by the vastness of the Internet community. The site(s) were passed around to such an extent that entire offices of people would be seen gathered around their computers enjoying Mahir's site, laughing, and forgetting their worries for awhile."
Enter big business.
Specifically, eTour.com, an online Web surfing guide. It's eTour that sponsored Mahir's recent US tour, a trip that had been lambasted by some die-hard Mahir fans as a cynical effort to exploit Mahir's grassroots fame, capitalizing on the outgoing Turk's newfound image while paying only lipservice (plus a minor cash donation) to the charitable causes Mahir advocates.
"I think eTour's commercial involvement can be likened to ambulance chasing, at best," says Malcolm Lawrence, Editor-in-Chief of Babel. For Lawrence, whose multicultural e-zine has proven to be one of the most interesting and ambitious grassroots projects on the Web, Mahir's real message has been put in danger of being overshadowed by eTour's more pressing interests: publicity, publicity, and, of course, publicity.
"Having not understood the hyperbolic arc of Mahir's celebrity trajectory and where it is right now, eTour is acting as if his celebrity is simply due to his hijacked homepage," says Lawrence. "They act as if his pleas for world peace didn't even occur."
A beloved icon, alienated fans, and rich corporations -- this should sound familiar to pretty much everyone. It's the classic American story, told about a Turkish man who posted his page on the World Wide Web.
But this story may have a happy ending, after all.
Jacob Park, creator and Webmaster of Mahir Central and an employee with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa Program, had been at the forefront of the criticism of eTour, until a recent meeting between himself, Mahir, and eTour representatives.
"Mahir is having a good time and he is being treated well by the folks at eTour," said Park, in a conciliatory statement that comes on the heels of some of his rather stern anti-eTour writings. "Yes, the tour is a PR opportunity for eTour, but Mahir has also been given the opportunity to speak about those issues which concern him most: orphans, starving children, animal rights, and the environment."
And the significance of all this sound and fury? Obviously, corporations are still doing their best to capture the eyes (and wallets) of the online populace, discovering that there's often no substitute for the good, old fashioned buzz that accumulates around an event or person that consumers are genuinely excited about.
But more importantly, thanks to the Web's amazing capacity for word-of-mouth publicity, a single human being with a message that resonates or amuses can now be turned into an overnight sensation, with all the pitfalls that entails.
This may lead to a whole host of different firsts, each with their own effects upon the world. Time is now the only obstacle standing between us and the first huge, grassroots Web best-seller, the first Internet grassroots pop music sensation and, perhaps, the first major online religion.
And, rest assured: eTour, Yahoo! and Amazon.com will all be there, angling for a slice of the pie.