Two stories caught my eye in the last couple of days, both dealing with the strange relationship people have with publicity.

First, there’s this story about Allison Stokke, who is a pole vaulter that has become an Internet sex symbol because some sports blog posted a picture of her at a pole vaulting event in which she looks really hot.  In order to deal with her unwanted popularity, Allison and her family decided to…sit down for a front page article on the Washington Post.

Then today, I heard about a kid named Kunal Sah, who had hoped to win the National Spelling Bee in order to get the world to pay attention to the plight of his parents, who are having all sorts of trouble with the immigration process and were deported to India not too long ago.  Of course, he didn’t win– and the the NYT has done a couple of pieces on him anyway…which has brought attention to his situation.

It makes me smile to see how savvy the next generation of attention consumers has become at such a young age.

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