Who Is Thomas Elliot? Video Shows How Celebrities Are made

Thomas Elliot: Fictional Celebrity Created at Virginia Mall

Who the hell is Thomas Elliot? He wasn't in The Hunger Games. he wasn't in Spider-Man. He's just Thomas E. Cramer, a random guy. However a shopping mall full of people now thinks he's a movie star.

Thomas Cramer and Chill Hill Media did a quick social experiment at a Richmond, Virginia shopping mall to see how quickly they could trick people into buying him as a real celebrity. It only took three minutes, apparently.

The video below shows cutaways to Twitter: apparently mallgoers were using the mobile web to discuss seeing Thomas Elliot, but not to figure out who he was.

Actually, if mallgoers googled "Thomas Elliot" they would indeed have found a Thomas Elliot in IMDB, but not with Hunger Games or Spider-Man credentials.

This is why Kim Kardashian is famous. This is why Paris Hilton is famous. We pay attention to certain people only because we see others doing it. We want to be close to fame, even if we have no connection with the person who is supposedly famous. Not one single person at that mall actually recognized Thomas Elliot from a movie, because he hasn't been in any.

Here's how to create an insta-celebrity at a shopping mall:

1. Get a few friends to pose for photos with one of them as "the celebrity".
2. Wait for others to jump on the bandwagon (apparently they will)
   
3. ?
4. Profit

Thomas Elliot is now a real celebrity... well, an internet celebrity, anyway, for what it's worth.

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sourced by NowPublic Staff