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Creative Production 289and youth-created content visible to other creators. Aspiring creators donot need to look exclusively to professional and commercial works formodels of how to pursue their craft. Young people can begin by modelingmore accessible and amateur forms of creative production. Even if theyend there, with practices that never turn toward professionalism, theystill can gain status, validation, and reputation within specific creativecommunities and smaller audiences. The ability to specialize, tailor one’smessage and voice, and communicate with small publics is facilitated bythe growing availability of diverse and niche networked publics. Gainingreputation as a rapper within the exclusive community of Bay Area Hyphyhip-hop, being recognized as a great character writer on a particular roleplayingboard, or being known as the best comedic AMV editor for aparticular anime series are all examples of fame and reputation withinspecialized communities of interest. These aspirational trajectories do notnecessarily resolve into a vision of making it big or becoming famous withinthe mode of established commercial media production. Yet they still enableyoung people to gain validation, recognition, and audience for their creativeworks and to hone their craft within groups of like-minded and expertpeers. Gaining recognition in these niche and amateur groups means validationof creative work in the here and now without having to wait forrewards in a far-flung and uncertain future in creative production.In terms of discourses of fame, some producers straightforwardly claimedthey sought fame and widespread recognition for their work. However,others eschewed connections to fame, which is a construct that often isladen with ideological baggage and negative connotations. For example, agroup of older male teen producers from California on YouTube (who hadwon a festival prize for their work) expressed frustration that some of themost famous youth contributors to the site created work that they saw assubpar, uncreative, and not particularly technical (Lange, YouTube andVideo Bloggers). Fame is often discussed as a relational construct in whicha person who may be considered famous by certain measures denies beingas famous as another producer or media maker. For some participants,being famous was not as important as improving their skills and receivinglegitimation from a select few peers they deemed capable of understandingtheir contribution in a meaningful way.What is significant about contemporary networked publics is that theyopen up multiple aspirational trajectories for young people. While some