Once you have been to a live concert, the atmosphere is difficult to forget. The audience waits in eager anticipation for the stars to arrive while sitting jam-packed inside of a stadium with thousands of lights flashing everywhere. As soon as the singer and band walk out onto the stage, the room explodes with cheers of delight and a roar of applause. Once it begins, people blow out their ear’s drums and vocal cords just to listen and sing along. And if by chance the singer comes down and hands them a T-shirt, trinket, or even just touches their hand, they stare in awe as if they have seen the face of God.
While there have always been famous people in the world that are well-known and loved (or hated) by the masses, the internet makes it so that our every waking moment can be spent emotionally investing in their lives. We pass the time discussing who our favorite celebrity is and why they are superior to all the others. We become obsessed with knowing all the details of their lives, consuming any product that they advertise, and grasping at every opportunity to get a glimpse of them. We make the love of actors, politicians, and athletes a piece of who we are—our allegiance supplants our personality and our fealty to them becomes our sign that we are one of the virtuous ones, the “in” crowd. Needless to say, this is not a healthy way of living.
Firstly, and most obviously, it creates a false perception of the person behind their famous persona. Because of their fame and wealth, we begin to see them not as fallible humans but as uniquely perfect, like the only splashes of color in a monochrome world. And because of this, we treat them as though they hold the key to everything in our society. Actors begin to weigh in on serious cultural issues, even though their only credential is that they excel at pretending to be someone they are not. Singers write songs to protest complicated global conflicts with little knowledge about the intricacies of international relations. Athletes give advice that doesn’t make any sense, politicians make promises they can’t keep, and so on.
Just recently, Newsweek conducted a poll that asked how important Taylor Swift’s political endorsement is to people and found that “18 percent of voters say they're ‘more likely’ or ‘significantly more likely’ to vote for a candidate endorsed by Swift.” 18 percent might not seem like a lot at first, until you realize that that percentage should be zero. Even if you like Taylor Swift, she became famous by singing about breakups, not for giving political insights. Just because someone is famous for a particular skill does not mean they have the answer to all the world’s problems.
Secondly, the obsession with personalities distracts us from what really matters: people’s morals. It used to be that in the entertainment sphere, the only time you saw or heard from an actor was during interviews that were curated to make them seem likable. Because of this, we knew very little about their political stances, personalities, personal beliefs, etc. Thus, we could go about our lives knowing that the only thing an actor represented was the character they played.
That is no longer the case. Because of social media, celebrities are able to engage with their audience all the time. This results in any bad behavior or thoughtless opinions they may have plastered everywhere and for their tenuous lives and petty dramas to be played out on the national stage.
You would think it that this would shatter the illusion that these people are perfect, but often times it has the opposite effect. People begin to emulate the destructive behavior of their idols, because if a famous and likeable celebrity does it, then it must not be so bad. The disastrous conduct becomes incorporated into the perfect persona and ends up encouraging people to support ideas and activities that they might not have otherwise. It turns a fanbase into an activist group for a detrimental lifestyle that pressures and coerces people who enjoy the same movies or songs to take part. All of this happens without any consideration for the toxic effect it can have on kids and adults alike while they try to imitate their favorite artist.
It’s important to note that influence in it of itself is not inherently a bad thing. If used positively, a celebrity’s influence can help people to seek out the valuable aspects of life. They can encourage people to look outside of themselves and see that there is more to life than comfort and self-gratification or show that in everything we are called to live wisely and intentionally. Imagine if someone like Taylor Swift simply announced at her concert that some of the most important things you can do in life are to read books or spend time outside. Book sales would skyrocket, and REI would be packed; All because a singer said she liked to read and sit at the park.
These are the kinds of attributes that great leaders embody; they use their words and actions to inspire people to do more than they ever thought possible. But all of these insights would be valuable regardless of who is saying them. And unfortunately, the celebrities who are willing to display these kinds of thoughtful and valuable messages are few and far between. Instead, celebrities continue to make poor choices while people are suckered into thinking they should as well. The personalities blind people to the spew of garbage advice and reprehensible lifestyles that influences the culture at large.
We cannot allow ourselves to be taken anymore. We have to be willing to disagree with people and to speak out when people are straying away from reason and common sense. We should only care about a celebrity’s opinion because of the worthiness or insanity of their idea, not because it comes from the celebrity themselves. This does not mean we should never listen to anyone famous or forever boycott movies because we have a disagreement with the people involved in its making. This is not a call for cancel culture, where people levy their political and social power to destroy people’s lives and reputations because they expressed an opinion we don’t like. This is a wake-up call to say that we should value ideas over personalities. It is an acknowledgement of the reality that the deification of celebrities inhibits us from separating the good things they say and do from the bad. Every person has something you will disagree with in one way or another, so a person’s wealth and status should not make them exempt from the same criticisms we use in every other context. Celebrities are not God, and neither are we. It is our job to sift through the mountains of opinions and beliefs in the world to find the ones that will ultimately pull people towards the truth, regardless of who is saying it.