Celeb Culture is Way Out of Control

[Aristotle]

This is a general issue, but I will start if off with the issue of the Jolie/Pitt baby pictures:

Insiders are speculating the pics will go for between $15 million to $20 million. In fact, one photo-agency owner guesses that the only other thing that could possibly demand that much money is “Britney Spears giving birth to an alien.”

WTF.

Do people seriously care about this shit so much?

Sad.

[kestra]

It's just like pornography man!! There are people who do love it, they just won't admit it; otherwise there wouldn't be offers out there in the millions.

[Jidoe]

A lot of people (and I'm sorry women, but you're by far the majority here) find it very entertaining to probe other people's personal life. Hence why all the shitty reality shows are so popular.

[Kraxe]

For between $15 million to $20 million I want to see the conception process, not the end result.

[Gromgor]

Originally posted by Kraxe
For between $15 million to $20 million I want to see the conception process, not the end result.

For 15 Million I want to be the conception process.

[Rosuav]

How does one go about becoming a celebrity? I want to get my hands on some of that crazy money! Webcam on Rosuav. $1,000 per minute. See every click, every keystroke that comes from this unequalled genius... of marketing.

What IS so great about these people? Some of them are more than half-decent actors/actresses. Okay. Some of them WERE actors. Ho hum. Lots of them are idiots. I can find plenty of idiots elsewhere. What's so great about these people that they're worth so much money? If someone's competent in his or her field, be it film-making, singing, or whatever else, then yes, they're worth something - for their work. I know plenty of people who make good money singing, but aren't harassed like celebrities are. The world needs a wake-up call... Celebs are just PEOPLE! Ornery people like you or me.

[Savaric]

Originally posted by Jidoe
A lot of people (and I'm sorry women, but you're by far the majority here) find it very entertaining to probe other people's personal life. Hence why all the shitty reality shows are so popular.

I second this through and through.

For me I wonder about the people who are actually buying the crap. I think it's rich Japanese businessmen. It's the only possibility that makes sense.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Rosuav

What IS so great about these people?

I ask myself this on a regular basis.

Originally posted by Rosuav

If someone's competent in his or her field, be it film-making, singing, or whatever else, then yes, they're worth something - for their work.

Precisely. Paying them a lot for their work is fine. Paying them for baby pictures is ridiculous.

[Kraxe]

Apparantly they are good in the baby making department too. Annnnnd they are getting paid for it

Payment aside, it's the sheer size of the sum that staggers me. There's no way a magazine can make that back, even if they syndicate it out or whatever to almost every publication on the planet (well, maybe in that case).

Every now and then the celeb process backfires. While I doubt many of you know who Anthea Turner is, in the UK she dredged the depths of making money out of celebrity by using her wedding as an advertising board for a brand of chocolate bar. Got paid a fair sum (by UK standards) simply for her and her then hubby munching down on a chocolate bar during the wedding or just outside the church or something. With pictures of course (which were also Hello magazine or something).

This was considered so tacky it caused something of a backlash against this kind of thing. Not for long though I'm sure. But the Turner's chocolate wedding was for the longest time the yardstick by which celbrity tackiness could be measured. Until the arrival of Big Brother.

Big Brother did not just muddy the water of celebrity tackiness it filled the pond with shit. Previously you only had D list celebrities at the bottom of the rank. BB introduced us to the Z list. But what was so much worse was that all these Z-listers had 15 seconds of fame waiting for them, and suddenly the magazines and daytime TV were full of the fuckers.

Finally the concept of celebrity hit it's all time lowest common denominator; simply getting your mug on TV. Personally if murder wasn't illegal I would make it my god given mission in life to hunting down every contestant to every reality show and putting them in my own version of the Cube.

The Z list phenomenom aside, all famous people will have a certain amount of celbrity that normal people, the types with dreary shit filled lives like to read about to think - that could be me. It's roughly the same lines along which Bollywood works. Peoples' lives are drab, so fill it with something bright, colourful and cheery.