Really? Should I want that? As a consumer, do you like dealing with people like that? Do you like bosses like that?

Would you rather this post be some self-fellating post about why I’m right and you are wrong, or would you rather just let my arguments speak for themselves?

I like that many women admit what they know and what they don’t know. I like that most whistle-blowers are women. My favorite co-workers tend to be women who can set aside ego for a mission. There are certainly men like this as well, and I dig them too. They get things done.

I’m not sure why you are going off on a rant about this. If you don’t think your male student deserves the glowing recommendation he has the gumption to ask of you, don’t give it to him. If you stop rewarding this behavior, your students stop behaving this way. It’s a pretty simple equation. By doing so, you will be protecting that student from going out in the real world and getting creamed by someone who will tear them to shreds for being all puff and no substance, or wreaking serious havoc on a company because of incompetence.

I don’t want to be a huge self-promoter. I want to impact positive change and find satisfaction in my work. I promote myself only in that it helps me achieve this. You can find my work here and here. It speaks for itself.

Maybe your rant should be about how people reward shameless self-promoters who tend to be men instead of people who would rather focus on doing a good job than lying, cheating and stealing our way to the top. It could be about how the promotion of self-promoters is dangerous and that we should stop it. You want a solution to your rant–do these solutions work well enough for you?

Love your work. Just trying to help.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve known some web 2.0 “celebrities”, and some of them I really like. What I think people are realizing though is that many of these celebrities often become this way because 1.) they have an absolute focus on obtaining as many followers as possible and 2.) these followers believe that knowing or being associated with that person will also earn them a status of fame. It’s like hanging out with that boring, popular girl in high school. It gets you noticed, but it probably won’t accomplish much.

Why do I think the “A-List” will and should disappear?

The online space has the power to equalize the entire world. The barriers for entry in terms of exposure have never been lower. We have a medium allows us to present information in an interactive way. There is no soap box. There is no corporate entity telling us what to do. Information is delivered not from the powerful leaders who can afford to push out information, but from a cloud of people with different perspectives, experiences, and skill sets.

The web 2.0 early adopters showed us how to use the tools so we have to give them credit for opening the door. However, the sooner we encourage people to go beyond the simple vanity of new media, the sooner we can attract the vast numbers of people who are actually set to improve our world by communicating with these advanced tools.

What would this look like? Imagine the following scenarios:
1.) Instead of just Robert Scoble Qiking everything, victims of natural disasters like Katrina Qik what is happening during and after a storm. How much easier would it be to mobilize people?
2.) Imagine all the world’s major AIDS researchers forming a Ning group with AIDS victims and others involved in the fight against AIDS.
3.) Imagine watching an world renown economist Jeffrey Sachs giving a lecture to anyone who wants to see it using Viddler. Watchers could leave comments on the timestream that Sachs would actually answer. Watchers could also engage in a discussion in comments, or could chat about the discussion using Oovoo or a chat room.

The possibilities are limitless. I say, let the 21st century Renaissance begin.