I was thinking about this today, because I am in the minority - I don't care about celebrity relationships, real or fake, or their kids or anything. I am not invested in celebrities beyond their careers. (This is why I found the fixation on Rachel Zegler from the right super annoying; and even people still upset over famous people during covid. Famous people are annoying! Ignore them!).
So when I saw this post in my Notes, I was hoping you would dive into why people are so interested in celebrity relationships. I have never understood it. But it is interesting to know that many celebrity relationships serve duel purposes.
Ohh the 'why' I think would require an entire dissertation and even then I don't know if it would be satisfactory! I think Erik Hoel's look at the so-called Gossip Trap (https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-gossip-trap) is why present cultural obsession with celebrities' personal lives is so prevalent today--it's human nature weaponized and monetized, if that makes sense?
I think the harder it is to avoid this type of coverage the harder it is not to care, as well, whether that's in a positive or negative way, we can only be sprayed with information for so long and just not absorb it, if it makes sense? That's definitely where my personal fixations come from. And I don't like it! But I spent years *actively* avoiding this stuff and it was truly inescapable. Which is why I think the business-making of it all is so relevant because that's partly why it's everywhere, yk?
I also think that it relates to our imaginary social worlds (a concept I'm kind of obsessed with) which paired with our parasocial and paratext culture creates these attachments and expectations that are either fed or challenged with the gossip coverage, if that makes sense? I am working on a piece exploring what I call parasocial limerence but I don't know that I'm touching on the "why" in that so much as documenting an observable phenomenon...
Oh thank you for your reply! How do you mean by "imaginary social worlds"? Do you mean like daydreaming and how people include celebrities into their personal fantasies?
I guess the "why" isn't knowable beyond capitalism? I have been thinking about how long the paparazzi have been around; since like the 30s? And of course fandom itself has probably been around in some form for maybe centuries. I imagine there have always been very famous/beloved individuals and that they had a cloister of people very invested in them.
If the paparazzi went extinct today, it would take away an entire industry devoted to celebrities and giving people access. And if all celebrities left social media, and only did press about their films (or stopped doing press altogether), we wouldn't know anything about them. I wonder what would happen. How compulsive is all of this? Would removing the ability to fixate end the fixation?
Yes, I agree! So much of what I know about celebrities has been against my will! Even if I got rid of my technology, other people are invested in famous people so you have to deal with their obsessions. To avoid all of this, you would need to move into the woods and stay there. Forever.
I don't think John L Caughey invented the term imaginary social worlds, but he wrote the best book on it, and it takes the approach that all sorts of fantasies, memories, daydreams, media involvement etc are "social processes because they involve people in pseudo-interactions with images of other people." So that does include celebrities but also reminiscing about your past conversations with people in your life--or think about having a dream where someone does you wrong and you still carry that feeling with you when you wake up. It's not REAL but it is still being perceived as a social event that affects you, right? And that's partly why parasocial attachments can be felt so strongly, because even if it's not a mutual relationship you've still experienced it on your end. His argument, that I do believe he proves, is that this is something that's existed throughout history and is a result of human culture, the celebrity part of it is also just a result of what culture looks like today.
...which leads me to your paparazzi extinction scenario! I don't think it's possible because if all of the professionals disappeared they were be replaced with fans. There's already a really active ecosystem of so-called update accounts that get fed media/information to spread it on, and if the paparazzi weren't there these people would just take over fully I think. Leaving social media would change things but it's their bread and butter so I don't think that would ever happen. As much as I hammer on about how toxic it is to foster superfandom and encourage this type of cultic devotion, they do it because it's profitable. It's like that one supermanager who admitted to lying to the press constantly and his reasoning was that others do it too, so he's not gonna fall behind by not playing the game.
And yes! Fandom has existed for centuries, there were "Austenites" dedicated to Jane Austen and Liszt the composer was known to have "Lisztomaniacs". I don't know about when paparazzi became an official thing but I do know that fan magazines were started in the 1910s, and they originally were just about film stuff but people wrote in enough asking for personal information that they leaned into it, so the gossip and fake stories (and relationships) were prevalent back then already.
>When performers like Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, and, yes, Jeff Koons and Marina Abramovic try so hard to showcase and communicate how sincere they are, instead they reveal how out-of-touch they are — from each other, from themselves, from us. These are not just famous performers; they are performers of fame. In their grandiose sincerity, their attempt to keep it real (West says his “passion is for humanity” and that his art is totally about “beauty, truth, awesomeness”), these stars become alien things, automata, odd gods before our eyes. By some bizarre alchemy, they then toggle back into demented sincerity while simultaneously remaining alien, other, apart. They become psychological quantum particles, in two states at once.
I keep thinking of the second order observation in this context (which I only discovered bc of your rec so thank you again!!) because so much of this is watching how people interact with one another and respond to one another and it's consumed as if it's "source material."
The thin barrier between real and fake relationships is what The Hunger Games is all about, faking romance for survival until it starts to become unclear how much is fake. It was always about reality TV and fake vs real, but it keeps becoming more and more relevant with social media culture spreading the snare.
There wasn't really room for it in this piece, but I was thinking about how prevalent/popular the fake relationship/dating trope is and how interesting it is that the awareness of that seems to be erased nonetheless...
Thanks for linking my essay, glad it added something to your already well-crafted piece. 🙏
Totally a personal assumptiom, but I feel like the Biebers are a great example of this. Everytime they're about to promote something, their relationship is in the news: either it's rocky or their totally inlove and just misunderstood. Fans and haters alike equally eat up every little headline.
I was thinking about this today, because I am in the minority - I don't care about celebrity relationships, real or fake, or their kids or anything. I am not invested in celebrities beyond their careers. (This is why I found the fixation on Rachel Zegler from the right super annoying; and even people still upset over famous people during covid. Famous people are annoying! Ignore them!).
So when I saw this post in my Notes, I was hoping you would dive into why people are so interested in celebrity relationships. I have never understood it. But it is interesting to know that many celebrity relationships serve duel purposes.
Ohh the 'why' I think would require an entire dissertation and even then I don't know if it would be satisfactory! I think Erik Hoel's look at the so-called Gossip Trap (https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-gossip-trap) is why present cultural obsession with celebrities' personal lives is so prevalent today--it's human nature weaponized and monetized, if that makes sense?
I think the harder it is to avoid this type of coverage the harder it is not to care, as well, whether that's in a positive or negative way, we can only be sprayed with information for so long and just not absorb it, if it makes sense? That's definitely where my personal fixations come from. And I don't like it! But I spent years *actively* avoiding this stuff and it was truly inescapable. Which is why I think the business-making of it all is so relevant because that's partly why it's everywhere, yk?
I also think that it relates to our imaginary social worlds (a concept I'm kind of obsessed with) which paired with our parasocial and paratext culture creates these attachments and expectations that are either fed or challenged with the gossip coverage, if that makes sense? I am working on a piece exploring what I call parasocial limerence but I don't know that I'm touching on the "why" in that so much as documenting an observable phenomenon...
Oh thank you for your reply! How do you mean by "imaginary social worlds"? Do you mean like daydreaming and how people include celebrities into their personal fantasies?
I guess the "why" isn't knowable beyond capitalism? I have been thinking about how long the paparazzi have been around; since like the 30s? And of course fandom itself has probably been around in some form for maybe centuries. I imagine there have always been very famous/beloved individuals and that they had a cloister of people very invested in them.
If the paparazzi went extinct today, it would take away an entire industry devoted to celebrities and giving people access. And if all celebrities left social media, and only did press about their films (or stopped doing press altogether), we wouldn't know anything about them. I wonder what would happen. How compulsive is all of this? Would removing the ability to fixate end the fixation?
Yes, I agree! So much of what I know about celebrities has been against my will! Even if I got rid of my technology, other people are invested in famous people so you have to deal with their obsessions. To avoid all of this, you would need to move into the woods and stay there. Forever.
I don't think John L Caughey invented the term imaginary social worlds, but he wrote the best book on it, and it takes the approach that all sorts of fantasies, memories, daydreams, media involvement etc are "social processes because they involve people in pseudo-interactions with images of other people." So that does include celebrities but also reminiscing about your past conversations with people in your life--or think about having a dream where someone does you wrong and you still carry that feeling with you when you wake up. It's not REAL but it is still being perceived as a social event that affects you, right? And that's partly why parasocial attachments can be felt so strongly, because even if it's not a mutual relationship you've still experienced it on your end. His argument, that I do believe he proves, is that this is something that's existed throughout history and is a result of human culture, the celebrity part of it is also just a result of what culture looks like today.
...which leads me to your paparazzi extinction scenario! I don't think it's possible because if all of the professionals disappeared they were be replaced with fans. There's already a really active ecosystem of so-called update accounts that get fed media/information to spread it on, and if the paparazzi weren't there these people would just take over fully I think. Leaving social media would change things but it's their bread and butter so I don't think that would ever happen. As much as I hammer on about how toxic it is to foster superfandom and encourage this type of cultic devotion, they do it because it's profitable. It's like that one supermanager who admitted to lying to the press constantly and his reasoning was that others do it too, so he's not gonna fall behind by not playing the game.
And yes! Fandom has existed for centuries, there were "Austenites" dedicated to Jane Austen and Liszt the composer was known to have "Lisztomaniacs". I don't know about when paparazzi became an official thing but I do know that fan magazines were started in the 1910s, and they originally were just about film stuff but people wrote in enough asking for personal information that they leaned into it, so the gossip and fake stories (and relationships) were prevalent back then already.
After reading this, I had to revisit Jerry Saltz's comments on the [in]famous music video for Kanye West's "Bound 2" (https://www.vulture.com/2013/11/jerry-saltz-on-kanye-west-kim-kardashian-bound-2.html):
>When performers like Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, and, yes, Jeff Koons and Marina Abramovic try so hard to showcase and communicate how sincere they are, instead they reveal how out-of-touch they are — from each other, from themselves, from us. These are not just famous performers; they are performers of fame. In their grandiose sincerity, their attempt to keep it real (West says his “passion is for humanity” and that his art is totally about “beauty, truth, awesomeness”), these stars become alien things, automata, odd gods before our eyes. By some bizarre alchemy, they then toggle back into demented sincerity while simultaneously remaining alien, other, apart. They become psychological quantum particles, in two states at once.
Good read, thanks for sharing!
I keep thinking of the second order observation in this context (which I only discovered bc of your rec so thank you again!!) because so much of this is watching how people interact with one another and respond to one another and it's consumed as if it's "source material."
The thin barrier between real and fake relationships is what The Hunger Games is all about, faking romance for survival until it starts to become unclear how much is fake. It was always about reality TV and fake vs real, but it keeps becoming more and more relevant with social media culture spreading the snare.
There wasn't really room for it in this piece, but I was thinking about how prevalent/popular the fake relationship/dating trope is and how interesting it is that the awareness of that seems to be erased nonetheless...
Thanks for linking my essay, glad it added something to your already well-crafted piece. 🙏
Totally a personal assumptiom, but I feel like the Biebers are a great example of this. Everytime they're about to promote something, their relationship is in the news: either it's rocky or their totally inlove and just misunderstood. Fans and haters alike equally eat up every little headline.
Good call, JB had one of the first true stan fan bases so it makes a lot of sense. Still see them seething about Selena for some reason.