Columnist Ray Richmond has mentioned a half-assed site called Celebrity Ranker that claims to calculate how popular and sexy someone with a lot of internet exposure may be. It ranks people by sifting through Google and tabulating the pages focusing on this or that celebrity, which Ranker says number 23,706. (That’s appalling in itself — 23,706 celebrities pressuring maitre d’s to seat them in restaurants before others.)
But the rankings sound like total bullshit. As Richmond points out, George Clooney is only the 3,486th most popular celeb and the 4,618th sexiest. Really? I put in the names of the three Departed stars. Leonardo DiCaprio is behind Clooney in popularity (ranking at #3940 — his popularity rating is 5.127 on a scale of 0 to 7) but ahead in sexiness (#3947). Matt Damon wipes the floor with DiCaprio in terms of popularity (#2500 with a 5.706 rating) but loses out in terms of sexiness (ranked as # 5312). And Jack Nicholson is behind them both with #3689 popularity ranking and a sexy rating of # 6670….whoa!
Among internet columnists, David Poland out-rates me in tems of popularity — he’s #7941 and 4.033 compared to my ranking of #8949 and 3.762 — but I’ve been judged to be much sexier — #4502 compared to Poland’s #6305. But we’re both sexier than Nicholson. (How exactly does this site equate sexiness with internet page views again? Just trying to understand this as best I can.)
Let’s see…Fox 411‘s Roger Friedman is the 8,249th most popular guy online and the 4322nd sexiest. (Beating out Poland and myself in the latter category.) The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is the 9122nd most popular and the 7709th most sexy. Harry Knowles is more popular than Poland with a #6689 ranking but less sexy with a ranking of #6511. Hollywood Wiretap columnist Pete Hammond is the 9916th most popular and the 6200th most sexy. L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein has an #8787 popularity rating and a sexy ranking of #7719. And Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson has a #6098 popularity ranking and has been judged the 7010th most sexy. Eat my dust, Goldstein!
What I’d like to know is, who the hell are all those celebrities with popularity and sexiness rankings in the realms of 12,000, 15,000 and 20,000, given that most big-name celebrities seem to have numbers in the 3000 and 4000 range and internet columnists are more in the range of 4000 to 9000? You’d have to be a real scumbag with hair growing out of your nose to have, say, a popularity ranking of 14,978 and a sexy rating of 16,235. Think about this. You’d have to be a Serbian war criminal with hives, halitosis and a chronic farting problem to rank in the 20,000 range.
And just think — some psuedo-celebrity out there has been ranked in last place. Who could that be?