Real and fake celebrities

Celebrity culture: Real and fake celebrities - 6^th September 2012

Celebrity culture is well and truly a living, breathing, existing machine. We are absolutely buried with personal information of those we adore, idolise and imitate. However technology and social media have distorted the lines between what makes someone a ‘real celebrity’. Gone are the days where those who only became recognised globally were those rare, special individuals with real achievements, real charisma and real talent. I would learn lessons, be influenced, follow the trends of my favourite celebrities. Soccer icon Diego Maradona showed us how destructive the effects of drugs can be and how easily they can derail even one with ‘the hand of god’.  Maradona ‘provoked concerns about drug abuse and prevention in Argentina, particularly among young people’ (Brown, 2010). This showed just how influential celebrity culture could be.

Nowadays you could be one of the best running backs in the National Football League and have earned a legion of supporters and rightfully so. People will see you walking down the street and exclaim ‘There’s so and so! He just scored three touchdowns last week!’ You have achieved something people have recognised you for it.

Yet there is still ten times more people paying attention to your ex-girlfriend who is only known for having a large posterior and a sex tape.

For lack of a better KPI, let’s determine the more influential individual with each participant’s amount of ‘followers’ on international social site Twitter.

The aforementioned athlete, Reggie Bush, chimes in with a decent two and a half million followers. The latter, Kim Kardashian breaks the bank with a whopping 16 million followers. This is a great example of self-promotion prevailing over real talent. ‘Significance of the ordinary’ is at an all-time high as ‘fame is (now) differently produced’ (Gamson, 2011).

Reference list:

Brown, W 2010, Sport Celebrities and Public Health, Journal of Health Communication, vol. 15, issue 4, p358-373, viewed 05/09/2012

Gamson, J 2011, The Unwatched Life Is Not Worth Living, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. 126, issue 4, p1061-1069, viewed 05/09/2012