I read all the time. I take college lectures on CD and DVD. I love reading HN. But I don't think any of that consumption was based on the celebrity status of a person inside the community. Rather it was based on the perceived future value to me. Projected future value, as best as I can figure, doesn't relate to "notable people" Bill Gates made billions, but if he posted here on his opinion of functional languages I would give him no more or less consideration than if you did. In fact, if you and I had talked about functional languages in the past and I found your comments useful, I'd be more inclined to hear what you had to say over Bill. "Bill Gates" or "PG" or whatever is just a concept we have of people we've never met. I think you'll find once you meet them that they have to prove themselves like the rest of us. Life is like that: what have you done lately?
I read commentary to kick my belief system around. Lots of great commentators out there. But I don't have heroes, and if one of my favorite commentators were to post here, who cares?
I'm probably missing something. Apologies if I'm off-base.
There are many streams of data. Most are (in my experience) not worth the effort. I mostly listen to people who have said interesting things in the past, and I mostly hear about them through other such people. I inject a little randomness into that process by reading old and obscure stuff, but that's more to view my ideological bubble from the outside than to get a high-quality data source.