(one of) The Oddest Ouroboros
When celebrities do shit that's racist, sexist, self-serving, unethical, and grossly immoral AND WE'RE SHOCKED ABOUT IT, why? We create ideas of who they are and should be when they never stopped being as human as you or I. Remove their money & fame and they become no more different or important than the strangers we ride next to on the highway, sit next to on the train, stand in front of or behind in the grocery line or next to at concert venues. We hold celebrities to impossible standards because they're ones we don't even abide by... and we definitely don't impose those standards on people we actually know IRL. We create the expectation that celebrities of any kind should always make better decisions, not fuck others over, not abuse their power, and remain a good person... when the reality is, they're just as susceptible to flawed behaviors as anyone else.
It's ridiculous.
Especially because if the opportunity to leave normie status behind to be in a world of self-importance that elevates one above the masses, A LOT of people would take advantage of it. From observation, I don't even think it's necessarily about a desire to be rich or wealthy money. Yes, excessive amounts of money increases access to the things currently out of our reach, but a lot of people just want to be paid attention to... and even though the two can be intricately intertwined, we can still have one without the other. As we gain notable mentions though, it becomes easy to forget there will also be an increasing loss of autonomy. Our daily self-governance (or what it should be) is exchanged for public opinion, whether we want it to be or not. For people who already weren’t that great at governing their behaviors, the public opinion will eviscerate them the minute they do anything worth loudly judging, leaving who they were all along exposed to everyone. Sounds dramatic as fuck but just think about some famous people who have ended up in courtrooms for grossly unacceptable behavior. Fame and money didn’t make them that person; those two things increasingly gave them more access to indulge in the one thing they obviously craved: ATTENTION.
How we go about getting attention will always vary. When you have no significant amount of money, indulging in the things that get you attention is often referred to as living beyond your means. When you have the funds to support your attention seeking, it’s called living the good life. Is it fair? No, but rarely is anything in this experience we call being a human, especially when we allow perception to be reality.
For the "untouchable" celebrities, they have built a stronger illusion of security with teams of people to surround them TO KEEP NORMIES from getting too close.... they face this daily. If you read enough biographies, you'll learn of the lengths people go to get back a semblance of normalcy. As people’s fame grows, you can see their attempts to cling to peace in the people they choose to be the Gayles to their Oprahs, drugs, sex, and alcohol. And for some, eventually death. They don’t want to be normal, sitting next to their jury of peers in the court of public opinion judging others… but they also don’t want to be put on trial every time they display their humanity, good, bad, or indifferent.
It's the oddest ouroboros we seek out but avoid at the same time.
But it’s also an opportunity to stand in front of a mirror and question what we’re really seeking out of life… and if that thing is something we can live with as the rest of the world either pays (an unhealthy amount of) attention or leaves us alone to our own devices.
