Paparazzi for Hire!

In this town, you no longer have to be a celebrity or a reality TV star to have cameras trailing you around and shouting at you to "look over here!" If you've always wanted to be like an Olsen twin, ducking from cameras and shielding your face with your giant Starbucks cup, now you can be.

According to Page Six Magazine, there are now "celebrity wannabe" companies that will unleash mock paparazzi, bodyguards and publicists to follow you around the city. Prices for such services range from $730 to $3,000. Apparently that's a small price to pay to get in to Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn and La Esquina! 

"We've gotten people past the velvet rope," a manager of a company called Celeb 4 A Day told Page Six. "Restaurants and clubs usually like the attention we get them when we show up with our clients." (It seems that in a shattered economy, even the Waverly Inn could use the promotion of completely bogus celebrities--as long as they seem like real ones--in addition to its high-profile list of patrons.)

"I would do it again for sure," said 16-year-old Ariel Jacobs, who hails from Long Island. "People on the street were taking pictures of us. It really made me feel like a celebrity."

If $3,000 seems a little steep, there are other ways these days to achieve fame in New York. First, consider befriending a character on a reality show like The City. It helps to take on a marketable personality--like the evil backstabber who'll stir things up, or the understanding best friend. (That's how Whitney Port got her own show!) Or you can always appear somewhere where a show like Running in Heels is shooting and force your way in front of the cameras. It's actually a fairly easy task to execute, as the Daily Transom recently learned. 

These insta-celebrity companies made us wonder if every time another socialite announces their own reality show, they were in fact employing the services of companies like Celeb 4 A Day. After all, giving off the impression of fame is sometimes more than enough.