Tila Tequila

Tequila Dreams, And MySpace Viewers Fantasize

By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 26, 2007; C01

WOODLYN, Pa. -- Internet star Tila Tequila is grousing from her perch in the back corner of Bootleggers, a noisy, beer-poster-splattered bar in a suburban strip mall somewhere between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del. She's here to meet some "friends," of which she has many. But it is obvious she'd rather be elsewhere. She's hungry. Tired. Leery of the tottering guy in the cowboy hat who won't go away, who keeps whispering into her ear.

It's not easy being a MySpace queen!

Tila Tequila is something like the Paris Hilton of cyber-celebrities, genus famous-for-being-famous. She says her talents include looking attractive, being loud and being accessible to any pimply dork with a computer. She calls herself a musician, but that point is debatable.

She's a star by virtue of her 1.7 million virtual "friends" on the social-networking site MySpace, where her success has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. On average, she receives more than a thousand new friend requests every day, from people she doesn't know. She's such a major online presence -- all those digi-friends! all that attitude! all those half-naked photos !-- that PC World just named her one of the "50 Most Important People on the Web."

Now, Tequila (real name: Thien Nguyen), a 25-year-old model prone to prancing around in her underwear, is trying to parlay her MySpace popularity into a career as a recording artist. And she's doing so without the backing of a record label.