Why Are We Obsessed with Celebrities? | Tim Wu | Big Think

Why Are We Obsessed with Celebrities?
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Although we know better intellectually, we treats celebrities as if they exist in a different realm. Is there an element of misplaced religion at work? Our society reveres celebrities like gods, but if they are gods, jokes Columbia law professor Tim Wu, then they’re more like the Greek gods, who were hopelessly and petulantly flawed. Nobody as yet fully understands our culture’s obsession with the famous elites among us, but for Wu, the most compelling ideas so far are those that compare celebrity worship to our inherent instinct to look for things that transcend the normal, that hints at life on a different plane. Does going into a two-hour scroll saga through an actor or sport star’s Instagram reflect a religious, seeking impulse within us? "There’s something to those theories," Wu says, "because I just can’t really understand it otherwise." Tim Wu’s most recent book is The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads.
Tim Wu’s most recent book is The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads.
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TIM WU :

Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate, professor at Columbia Law School, and director of the Poliak Center for the Study of First Amendment Issues at Columbia Journalism School. Wu's best known work is the development of Net Neutrality theory, but he also writes about private power, free speech, copyright, and antitrust.

In 2014, he ran as the progressive Democrat candidate for lieutenant governor of New York. His book The Master Switch (2010) has won wide recognition and various awards. Wu is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and a former contributing editor at The New Republic. He formerly wrote for Slate, where he won the Lowell Thomas Gold medal for Travel Journalism. Wu worked at the Federal Trade Commission during the first term of the Obama administration, and has also worked as Chair of the media reform group Free Press, as a fellow at Google, and worked for Riverstone Networks in the telecommunications industry. In 2015, he was appointed to the Executive Staff of the Office of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as a senior enforcement counsel and special advisor.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Tim Wu: You know celebrity is a really mysterious thing that I don’t think anyone fully understands. Why are we so interested in these people who are just people but somehow have come to embody some greater idea. It’s not even that they’re great. I mean you don’t worship them necessarily because they’re more virtuous than we are or lofty or something. If they’re like gods they’re more like the Greek gods, you know. They’re prone to embarrassing drunken incidents. The say outlandish things but somehow people just can’t seem to look away from celebrities and it’s not something new. Although what is new is the effort to commercialize that fact to an extent never seen before. New I mean since the 1970’s or so. The effort to build entire platforms, magazines on nothing but celebrity by itself is a development of the twentieth and twenty-first century. We’ve gotten to a point it’s sort of unusual where if you want to get attention to almost anything you need to start with the celebrity. If you’re interested in the problems of Africa you don’t really get people interested.

You have Madonna adopt an orphan. Now we’re talking, you know. It just has become the sine qua non for getting attention as having some kind of celebrity associated with it. When I was running for office for instance, you know, we’d have an important proposal about corruption or something. But when we brought out Mark Ruffalo to endorse our candidacy oh now we’re talking. Suddenly everybody was there. And it is strange that this has become the way we organize this incredible important part of our lives, the products, whatever it is. But it’s kind of the way it is.

I’ve read a lot of the literature on why people are so interested in celebrities. I think they don’t really understand. The most compelling to me are the ideas that compare it to this sort of instinct that is also inherent in religion or sort of looking for transcendence of the normal that we sort of believe these people operate on a different plane. If you somehow end up running into Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks and you may not even care for them as actors, may be indifferent.

[nitishbansal]

If you worship any celebrity
(Whether

There are only two reasons for that

1. You don't like the life you living & desperately finding some purpose to feel better about yourself.

2. Read point one again.

[CoffeePoints]

Apparently it wasn't obvious for the viewers, but when he says "everyone" and "we", he means society as a general. Not literally every single living person on Earth

[justmadeit]

The less you watch tv, the less you care about what 'celebrities' are up to. Try it sometime :)

[robotomato]

I think people who idolise celebrities are ignorant to the process. Once you learn how stories, movie industry, fashion industry works, it will look normal.

[sarahoputric]

It´s just sad that we are so obsessed by people who literally do they job like anybody else. Why not be obsessed with doctors, scientists, volunteers and so on? These are the people who actually keep our society going. An actors stops acting...nothing changes. Doctors/nurses stop working...dead people. I wish people would appreciate the work of others, as they appreciate the work of an artist.

[sanctificate]

When you think of it. They’re completely pointless. Yes, sure, you can enjoy a movie, enjoy a YouTube video. But why do we have to obsess over the lives of other people and ignore our own lives. So much more could be done if we didn’t obsess over them. The hours we spend browsing social media looking at their photos? We can spend our time on our lives, not theirs. Plus why should we give them our hard earned money (in the form of merchandise) because they are existing. It’s just really a waste of time. You can enjoy movies, you can enjoy YouTube videos. Just don’t give them your money and waste your time.

[emmanuelstyles]

Because most people are followers. Celebrities are regular people. They use the bathroom the same way you do, they also make mistakes, they lie, they cheat, they steal. Oh wait lady gaga made a catchy song? guess she must be immortal....right

[IglooDweller]

I think being starstruck by seeing a celebrity you don't even like has to do with social status. When a person is that high above you, no doubt you instinctually become submissive.

[fr]

Why do people care more about Kobe Bryant’s death than the death of millions going through genocide rn?

[RoodyToody]

Great to see self awared people in these comments, I can't have a real conversation with any of my friends.
Rationality and self awareness is hard to come by.

[josette]

This hits me so personally, I’m filipino and my parents even put me in some acting lessons when I was younger. They loved watching TV because they never had it in the Philippines. I quit very quick and I wanted to do something that felt like I helped others like being a teaching or nurse. Now 20 years later I’m dealing with stupid regret about could i have been more “successful” but at the end of the day i feel in my soul that, that’s not what i while by body occupies this earth. ❤️But i still feel bad sometimes 🤦🏽‍♀️

[EmperorsNewWardrobe]

Celebrities are simply exaggerated characters of the community, and we are interested in their drama with others more than them as people. If our interest in them was solely determined by their skills, Stephen Hawking would be many times more famous than Victoria Beckham, considering that he vastly outperforms her and even in her own category as a singer.

[WDC_OSA]

This guy's point is one big "I dunno."

[nihu]

I think its more as an admiration since modern day movies are hyped and marketed at such large scale that each person you see onscreen is like your friend, but you can't send them your feelings so when you see them in real life or hear things about them all those memories rush together in their identity .... just a theory

[chopperman]

There are popular people everywhere I think. In your school, work, local community. I'm sure it's been like this forever, that's just how humans are. It's just that with the internet, some people are able to become popular to the extreme, and that's where you get celebrities.

[debrismatter]

This video did not provide content on the topic I hoped to hear. People love celebrities, because they like the personification of what a human being can do and to ponder the idea of themselves in their position. Why does a little boy like Messi, because of the idea that he after having played football entertained becoming like him. People wish to be celebrities and are escape from their own reality fantasizing about their lives.

[SydneySings]

All these people in the comments getting all defensive smh

[ݪ̧̣ف]

not even celebrities there's even people idolising serial killers

[TheSmilodon]

Because we are brainwashed and conditioned that way; especially the fact people worship money and television promotes both, what's beautiful, what is not and importance of money. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

[zay_kash]

I don't even understand how celebrities are more important than us BTW I don't think this a lot of people say this to me in some random comment sections