I just caught this fantastic video update from Current TV on Parson’s infamous Internet Famous Class. Or feel free to watch this ho-hum NBC clip on the class below:

Internet Famous Class on NBC from Jamie Dubs on Vimeo.

The students study Internet memes, extrapolate the messages and techniques, and apply them to their own work in hopes of achieving internet fame, or “famo.” This “famo” is measured by the Famotron algorithm class professor Jamie Wilkinson developed, which aggregates and measures many a metric related to receiving attention online. Facebook friends added? Retweets inspired? Articles dugg?–it’s all tracked to see if the content the students create is worthwhile and worthy of a passing grade.

The results: one student bikes around Manhattan in a thong, another continues posting Youtubes to her music blog, many more post thumbnails of scantily clad women, and the professor garners the lion’s share of attention.

Why is it that the majority of online recognition for the class is heaped on the professor and not the students? Hard to say exactly, but I think the answer’s two-fold. First, because Wilkinson created the InternetFamo.us blog, which provides a regularly updated platform for his students’ best work. Secondly, because none of the content the students created was more novel or interesting or conversation-worthy than the original concept for the class itself. I think that’s because most of them failed to see the distinction between what’s popular in the one-off viral sense and what creates sustainable interest. Here are my rough formulas:

• Viral Success = absurdity + hilarity + momentary escape from minutiae of daily grind

• Sustained Success = consistent (updates, solid content)

At first I thought the class sounded like an exercise in vacuity, but I eventually came around to the message that Prof. Wilkinson was getting across. It’s put best in an interview with Chocolate Rain star, Tay Zonday, Wilkinson posted to the class blog:

When asked about the travails of Internet Celebrity, Zonday says, “The hardest thing about being an Internet Celebrity is you don’t get any vacation. There is no off-season, especially on Youtube.”

Truth. As a crash course in seeing how virality functions, the class sounds exhilarating. I just hope that the students, now better aware of the exciting platforms for self-promotion, recognize that the easiest route to sustainable famo is great work and a maniacal work ethic.

Things to think about:

• What do we think about the Famotron’s metrics?

• What do we think about a class whose syllabus says, “HOMEWORK: get some bad press, create a scandal, a hoax, be real bad”?