Anyone remember Tila Tequila? Well, we sure do. We remember her as a highly popular person on MySpace, during the early 2000s. And we also remember her as a magazine figure, even landing in playboy. In fact, her fame extended beyond that, to the landscape of reality TV. Her own show was called “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila,” and was centered on her bisexual lifestyle.

But all of the fame and glamour aside, Tila Tequila has changed. She’s not the same person you knew in the early 2000. You see, Tequila wasn’t exactly an A-List celebrity, despite all the following she had online. She was just a C-list, and people like her lose fame quickly.

She had a rising celebrity career, until her excess desire for fame took her to some stupid stints. Let’s start with the fact that she had put out a sex tape, as soon as she started to lose following. Following that, she tried to conspicuously secure a wealthy life, by hooking up with Johnson & Johnson’s heir. And at some point, she also released some extreme anti-Semitic statements, with a lot of sympathy for Nazis…

Nothing screams persistent craziness more than the previous 3 actions in one person.

A lot of people attribute her actions to a mental illness, or to some kind of addiction. Many more assume that she has an addiction to attention, attempting to acquire it at all costs.

Holding Onto the Past?

The world has seen many celebrities, and a few of those have worked decades for full-time.

Tila Tequila is one of many temporary stars. But apparently, she seems to be holding onto her past fame in a very inappropriate way. She hasn’t risen beyond her early 2000s attention gracefully, and she’s paying the price with a ton of negative press.

Tequila was an internet celebrity, and doing anything on the internet is a grassroots effort. If you manage to gain fame online, you need a lot of authenticity to keep that up. And that’s simply something that Tila Tequila doesn’t provide.

A Hustling Paris Hilton?

Tila Tequila and Paris Hiltion are similar in many ways. Both rose to stardom, with little to no talent at all. None of them have artistic talents, or any talent related to entertainment. And yet, both are famous.

But unlike Paris Hiltion, Tila Tequila didn’t grow up rich. She came from a middle-class background, and was a daughter of immigrants to Houston. She had to work slightly harder, modeling for many import car magazines, and eventually exploring the internet as a medium for fame.

A Good Marketer…

But while lacking in talent, she was a good marketer. Tila Tequila started websites, selling shots of herself for premium content to viewers. She also did a lot of fan interactions, using mediums such as MySpace and Friendster to get her traffic.

Even after getting booted from Friendster, Tila Tequila still had a large following. She was after all a brand name on that website. To be specific, she was an early member, having amassed a lot of following during the website’s early periods. And thus, she was one of the most popular on Friendster.

That fame spread to her MySpace profile too. She had the most-viewed profile in 2006. To be specific, she had 1.5 million friends on that account. And again, most of her profile was made up of bikini-clad pics and party shots.

And 2006 was an excellent year for Tila. This was the launch of her offline career, where she got her own show “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.” She also got reviewed by many top tier media outlets, such as the New York Times and Time magazine.

Let’s get back to marketing for a second. If we look at Tila’s online success, we’ll see that it catered to the internet’s culture at the time. Tila also used her success to merchandise in manners considered innovative at the time. For example, she used her fame to sell everything from shirts and hoodies, to posts and calendars that were “Tila” themed. But she takes it a step further, and she decides to be communicative with her wide audience, which is something not a lot of hot chicks do after posting their pictures online.

What happens to falling stars?

Even though Tila landed many gigs offline, her offline career didn’t last long.

Her show “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila” aired between 2007 and 2008. By the end of that year, her show was replaced. This resulted in her focus more on music, and attempting to release new albums…

But even her music attempts slowly led to failure. She experienced many interpersonal problems that got in the way of her career. To start, she claimed that her ex-boyrfriend, Shawne Merriman, had beaten her. This led her to suing him for $1.5 million, where he in return counter0sued her for $2million. Nedless to say Merriman won, which was a financial cripple to Tila.

After that, Tila decided to explore her lesbian side, and got engaged with heiress Casey Johnson. Johnson would soon pass away from diabetes, which again, wasn’t a good mark on Tila’s career profile.

This was when Tila decided to take a more extreme path. She decided to release a lesbian sex tape in 2011, which was the downfall of her reputation. From then on, she would be seen as someone purely engaging in the sloppy side of show business, exploring sleaziness for table crumbs.

And to sum it up, in 2012, Tequila had gone into rehab to deal with drug abuse. We assume that this was the coup-de-grace of her career and her old self…

A New Tequila.

She’s still online, but she’s still not as famous. She looks a lot more mentally damaged, and much shier from media outlets. While she did try to explore social media again, getting a nice following twitter, her account did get banned. But regardless, she seems more grounded and down-to-earth now. And that’s something to like in anybody!