We’ve all grown up with idols in media of all sorts. People we hardly know, but feel we know due to the personas publicized in legitimate news and tabloids alike. The aggrandization of these individuals has only become more evident with the advent of social media and its normalization in our personal and professional lives. It’s all the easier to get swept up in the hype of it all, emulating a lifestyle that doesn’t truly reflect our reality and many cannot actually maintain. It seems so many of us forgo normal interpersonal interaction for the convenience of being able to connect through an app or website, building communities therein with people we might never meet in real life. I, personally, cannot count on one hand all of the occasions when I’ve meet a person whom, when they’re asked about themselves, have directed me to their Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook page and insisted I learn about and contact them there.
We all, to one degree or another, feed into it like a growing sickness. The vast majority of the world is in some way involved in social media platforms, whether that be to advertise our work or to share bits of our lives to paint a portrait of the person that we want friends and strangers to see in hopes of being like those we idolize. For so many of us, even our private lives have turned into a game of numbers. We count followers, likes, and work to shape our lives around what gets the most traction. These platforms sell us the feeling of being a star for the semi-private moments of our lives, documentation of our interests, and the fruits of our labor, but what are any of us really getting out of it? Are we gaining a connection to a community or a creating a pale reflection of celebrity lifestyles?
No matter where one stands on the matter, the effects of social media use are well documented. Overuse of social media is known to cause depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem in individuals, many of whom are marginalized or outright ignored by web-based communities. People learn to compare themselves with the new celebrity-based normal in a public sphere that is inundated with a million little things vying for our attention. Even those us who find success look up at those with more and feel that we’re standing at the foot of a mountain with a peak so far into the clouds that it appears an impossible climb. While we’d like to believe these communities are eclectic spaces for discourse and sharing of ideas, they very often come to resemble something much like the clique-culture of schoolyard days where the loudest, most charismatic voices hold sway and voices of reason are looked upon with derision. Even when people try to use their platforms for good, the landscape very quickly turns hostile as mob mentality takes hold and those daring to dissent find themselves made an outsider to be reviled, abused, and exiled.
It’s my conclusion that celebrity isn’t something born of good ideas. Celebrity is an addiction. It’s attention-grabbing noise — a colorful distraction created to glamorize an ugly, capitalist world that people don’t want to see and a tool used to sell good and bad ideas alike. Social media has brought those faces we recognize and idolize into the public space in order to allow those precious few a way to better exercise influence and shape public perception by making us believe it’s something normal to either open up our lives to the world or attach ourselves to influential people with fame-chasing sycophantism.
What’s your view on the matter? Do you think social media is a bane or boon? What are your thoughts on celebrity culture? Let us know down below.
Sour Revelry 