“The general public currently appears to be obsessed about media celebrities.” It does seem that way, doesn’t it? With all the different magazines, websites, newsletters, and blogs dedicated solely to the act of broadcasting these poor celebrities’ lives, you almost can’t escape it. Every day at cheerleading practice it’s “Chris Brown did this”, “Justin Beiber did that”, “Omg, did you hear about so and so?”, “Wow, I wonder who did her hair”. But is the problem really the public’s obsession with media celebrities? Or is it the media’s exploitation of these people’s lives? Fuel the fire and the flame will burn. Stop pumping in the oxygen and the flame will wither and die with ease.
It seems to me that all these magazines and pop-up internet ads have been strategically placed so as to spark our interest. Through apparent years of whatever method they might have used, the media seems to have found the perfect spot for displaying their gossip magazines: Grocery store checkouts. Sitting in line waiting until it’s your turn to be rung up, what is there to do but check out all the headlines? “Christina Applegate Welcomes Baby Girl”, “Jesse Taylor Ferguson Goes Public With New Boyfriend”, “Rachel Zoe Reveals Her Pregnancy Cravings”. Meaningless, yes, but if a 16-year-old girl was sitting in line, bored to death waiting for a turn at the checkout, do you really think she would pass up the opportunity to ‘read all about it’? I don’t think so.
As for the internet websites, they have also been extremely helpful in the fight to broadcast celebrities’ lives. Used almost daily by teens and somewhat routinely by the general public, internet websites are a great way to spark and fuel the fire that is curiosity… Or gossip… Or both. These websites include blogs, e-newsletters, and even social networking sites. All of these have been used, at some point in their virtual lives, to distribute news of media celebrities’ personal lives.
But what kind of effect might this frenzy of interest in celebrities’ personal lives have on the general public? Social networking sites can give you the answer to that. People have become so used to the idea of hearing of other people’s lives that they have developed an apparent need to broadcast their own. There are people on Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter who update their statuses daily, letting the whole world know every detail of their lives. On Facebook especially, hundreds of people will become their ‘friends’ and follow every second of their lives as if they themselves were a media celebrity.
The media has conditioned today’s youth to be deeply interested in and curious about other people’s personal lives. They have taught us to be too open about everything we do. Our business can no longer be our business. The sharing of personal information is now thought to be the ‘norm’ and anyone who holds out is thought to be ‘weird’ and ‘too isolated for their own good’. Well screw them. They’re caught up in the media’s dogma of complete openness and I refuse to be pulled down as well.