Celebrity culture and worship

~~Davetello~~ · 12-02-2014, 12:19 AM

What are your views on this? Personally, I find it deeply disturbing.

In the internet era there seems to be a proliferation in this sort of thing. You get lots of people putting famous individuals on a pedestal and defending them as if they're a relative, rather than a stranger who doesn't know you exist.

This sort of thing has been going on forever, but here in the UK it really ramped up with the funeral of Princess Diana...normal people who didn't know her from Adam crying on the street, "the people's Princess" etc. Even aged 15 I knew it was all nonsense. People seem to buy into the angelic images portrayed in the media.

Now of course we have people like David Beckham and myriad talentless pop stars and other sports stars, film-makers etc. These people are treated like demi-gods for no discernible reason. You have people defending them vociferously on the internet, and it's very disconcerting. Their fans talking about them as if they know them personally, as if they spend time with them every day. Most of these people probably wouldn't put half that effort into defending their own siblings or parents and they don't realise that they're just the gullible suckers in a macro money-making machine.

Then one of my pet hates about all of this - the glorification of famous people because of their philanthropy/charity work. You have these multi-millionaires giving a tiny proportion of their money to a charity and most of the time it's simply for the PR. There are rare cases where they care, but most of the time it's publicised. There are regular people who devote a far greater proportion of their time and income to charity, but they don't expect any congratulations for it. They'd have it no other way, because true charity is an anonymous act.

So yeah, the era of celebrity worship. What are your views?

12-02-2014, 12:19 AM	#1
~~Davetello~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Greater Glasgow, Scotland, The Ununited Kingdom Posts: 1,712	Celebrity culture and worship What are your views on this? Personally, I find it deeply disturbing. In the internet era there seems to be a proliferation in this sort of thing. You get lots of people putting famous individuals on a pedestal and defending them as if they're a relative, rather than a stranger who doesn't know you exist. This sort of thing has been going on forever, but here in the UK it really ramped up with the funeral of Princess Diana...normal people who didn't know her from Adam crying on the street, "the people's Princess" etc. Even aged 15 I knew it was all nonsense. People seem to buy into the angelic images portrayed in the media. Now of course we have people like David Beckham and myriad talentless pop stars and other sports stars, film-makers etc. These people are treated like demi-gods for no discernible reason. You have people defending them vociferously on the internet, and it's very disconcerting. Their fans talking about them as if they know them personally, as if they spend time with them every day. Most of these people probably wouldn't put half that effort into defending their own siblings or parents and they don't realise that they're just the gullible suckers in a macro money-making machine. Then one of my pet hates about all of this - the glorification of famous people because of their philanthropy/charity work. You have these multi-millionaires giving a tiny proportion of their money to a charity and most of the time it's simply for the PR. There are rare cases where they care, but most of the time it's publicised. There are regular people who devote a far greater proportion of their time and income to charity, but they don't expect any congratulations for it. They'd have it no other way, because true charity is an anonymous act. So yeah, the era of celebrity worship. What are your views?