Our Celebrity Obsession

Our generation will be far from the first to have an obsession with celebrities. Instead of googling the definition to "celebrity", 

i decided to rationalize it in my own head. who is a celebrity? the answer came to me immediately: "a celebrity is someone who's famous", I don't think I can go defining famous, if they're on wikipedia, they've made it. (or not, some smaller celebrities end up on gossip blogs, which is also a step in the "celebrity" world.)

there's nothing awkward about admitting your celebrity crushes or obsessions, we all have that one figure who just hits different for us. but the question i have to ask is; what are we really into?

I see two possibilities:

1) The Art/Product that a celebrity creates: musicians, painters, poets, actors,

(even businessmen??)

2) The persona of themselves that they portray to the public 

(notice how i use the word Portray; We, as consumers have to realise that the image of a celebrity is always marketed towards us, they're not a person to the agency or record label that they're signed to. Their personalities, looks and lives are altered to allow them to be fawned over. No matter how "authentic" your celebrity may feel, a larger part than we know is predecided by management. Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing, we do this in our own lives too, on a much smaller scale and without any monetary motives. Therefore, authenticity is only found in rare, candid moments or in-person meets. Or you could choose to trust this person you've never met, it's always up to you.)

Don't get me wrong, celebrities were made to be adored, I have a long list of public personas I look up to ranging from Frank Ocean to Paul Rudd to the entirety of Brockhampton, but making the distinction between "This Person's Celebrity Image" and "This Person's True Self", 

i only know one of these, and must act accordingly. 

But with the widespread availability of the internet, it has become a thousand times easier to keep up with the lives of the people you choose to idolize. Social media makes these people more accessible, almost human, but here comes another conflagration; Treating Celebrities Like People v/s Idolizing Them to a superhuman status.

Conversations about humanizing celebrities have been taking new ground in popular conversation today. The realization that these people are just... people, albeit with far better lives than ours, but still only human. I feel like we've already said enough about accepting that these people aren't perfect and should be allowed to grow and learn from their mistakes. but are we creating an environment conducive enough for growth? Is the fear of our perfect image being tarnished making us resort to extreme means (*whispers* cancel culture?)

The Entire purpose of this particular piece was to stir conversation about questioning the entire concept of idealization; Of marketed people, products and social relationships. To build our entire existence based on what is sold to us would erase our own attempts at authenticity, and at the end of the day, only the real survives. Being true to your beliefs, behaviors and actions, while keeping influences as minimal as possible, is the realest version of You. To seek inspiration from people who've made it Big amongst billions of people is not wrong, but be a conscious consumer, and treat people (reminder that celebrities are people) with kindness.

American Rapper J. Cole once said that the entire concept of celebrities would be extinct in 1,000 years. he made this comment and provided no context for it, leaving this statement open to interpretation, here's mine: The more accessible the internet gets, the quicker it'll become for ideas to spread, and with this sped up influx of ideas and personalities, every person will have a platform, the idea of fame will become tougher to achieve with so much competition, hence rendering the entire concept redundant. For this throwaway theory to come true, we'd have to live a thousand years, which unfortunately won't happen for you and I.

So the next time you want to get into an argument on stan Twitter about your favorite celebrities think: WWTD: What Would They Do? and the answer is nothing.