Participants in 
this popular new pastime, otherwise known as the “snapperazi”, are sneeringly referred to as Snappies (Slightly Nutty Amateur Paparazzi Imitators), or dismissed as Nokia Nazis. Snapperazi love celebrities, and they love snapping pictures of them. [...]
The media have been quick to exploit this new resource. It's now commonplace for showbiz magazines to offer the public cash incentives to submit photographs of celebrities. This week's Heat magazine proclaims: “You've been snapped! Armed with their cameraphones, here's who Heat readers have been spying on this week.” Note the language: snapperazi are not just nosey no-lifers with too much time on their hands. Oh no. They're “spying” on their prey, and, by implication, they're honorary members of that intrusive band of professional celebrity picture-takers who are on the trail of the next sizzling phew-what-a-scorcher scoop. Better still, it's £200 a picture.
There's cash to be made. A holiday-maker covered his vacation costs by phone-snapping a former England cricketer playing away from home in the Caribbean earlier this year. The shots were emailed direct from his handset to a Sunday newspaper's newsdesk, and (in time-honoured tabloid alliterese) the immoral miscreant's extramarital malarkey was all over the media in a matter of minutes. [...]
The celebrity's deal with the media devil is well-documented, and an accepted fact. They'll make you (if that's what you want), and they'll break you (if that's what the bottom-line demands). They'll take you to the height of fame but they'll take your privacy as the price. That they should now have a massive and well-equipped amateur support staff in every supermarket, and on every street corner, completely changes the nature of the game: it's now fully interactive, and privacy for stars will only exist in their homes and the upmarket clubs, bars and eateries that convert to mobile-free zones. How long before the Ivy and the Met Bar install a “phone check” alongside their “coat check”?
Once, the public were slack-jawed observers of a celebrity circus packaged and presented by media professionals. Now - equipped with advanced mobile technology - the public can provide active and instantaneous input into the media processes that power the celebrity machine. In the 3G age, we can all participate in the making and breaking of celebrities. The future's bright. As long as you're not a celebrity.
[James Herring in The Guardian]
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