Every time a celebrity or public figure dies, the reaction on social media sites follows nearly the same pattern: initially a mix of shock, questions, “R.I.P.’s”, postings of you tube videos, spike in Google searches. Maybe a week later, after we’ve all been beyond saturated with television and magazine media coverage of said death, suddenly the attitude changes to “why are we wasting time on this person, there are soldiers dying overseas, they are our real heroes!!!”
Well, duh, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any recent decade where celebs didn’t steal the spotlight from those more deserving of it. After all, it’s their purpose – the arts are often a refuge from the stresses and upsets of real life. The piano or dance studio can be your place to tune out everything else. Not an artist yourself? Then you admire one. Quite a bit.
But the entertainment industry is also known for mimicking reality, so when a larger-than-life performer dies suddenly, that death has real-world implications. However, because we perceive these celebrities to be more influential in our own lives than they actually are, the more important messages get buried.
Everyone blames the media; nobody wants to take responsibility. (I might also mention that you can absolutely be upset about & affected by more than one news story at a time, but this is another point in itself.)
Whitney’s death (Michael’s, Amy’s, on and on…) presents an opportunity to open up dialogue about a lot of important social issues: substance abuse, toxic relationships, corrupt medical practices, the glorification (and eventual stigmatization) that comes with celebrity, etc. etc. etc. The media, admittedly, gets it wrong every time by writing to appeal to the most ridiculous audience – the kind of person who’s wailing crying outside their apartment with a lit candle and sacrificial lamb for Whitney.
It’s easy to fall into this type of news consumerism for a couple of reasons. First: your peers. What are your friends saying about Whitney through tweets and Facebook statuses? Which of those statuses have you “liked?” As much as we want to act as if we’ve grown up and now operate on independent thought, we absolutely do not. Suddenly “I wanna dance with somebody” is everyone’s favorite song. iTunes sales of Whitney music have skyrocketed. It’s a bandwagon effect, now more measurable and obvious than ever, thanks to social media and the Internet.
The other main reason we care so much about “sexy” news stories: our TV pundits. Sometimes I watch the television and think: How did this asshole make it so far in the public sphere? Answer: Because if someone is loud or outrageous enough, we’ll listen. It doesn’t matter if we agree with what they’re saying or not, but their words will inevitably veer the topics of real-life conversation. Think about some of the most watched and influential figures in media today: Bill O’Reilly, Stephen Colbert, Nancy Grace, Sean Hannity. All big voices, gregarious personalities…they are celebrities and characters in their own right. It has much less to do with their words and everything to do with how much conviction we hear in them.
It gets less frustrating when you step back and realize that only you have ultimate control of the information you’re processing on a daily basis. Is our American media rife with inaccuracies, stupid information and even stupider people conveying it? Absolutely. But blaming the media isn’t going to change anything, it just diverts our attention to the shortcomings and constructs a bigger stage on which to spew the bullshit.
Try opening a newspaper or book instead. I’m consistently amazed at how much more I’m learning when I take the time to read and research for myself rather than have a talking head tell me what I should be paying attention to. Additionally, harboring our own private interests and studying our own inquiries protects them (somewhat) from public persuasion. A great way to screw something up is to share it with the world when it’s in its infancy.
(Left-right: Kylie Bisutti, Kim Kardashian, Aubrey O’Day)
