Celebrity gossip/media circuses

Anonus

1. What sort of person follows it, and

2. These get on my nerves. Bonus points for the Michael Jackson circus, which knocked protests in Iran out of the mainstream news media.

[Deleted User]

Yet another reason why I hate people.

LouieW

jaimeastorga2000,
I think it would probably be a better idea to blame the actual media/gossip circus itself rather than to hate people because it exists. I mean, sure some people do a lot of silly and horrible things, but they also do a lot of good. People are sure to have different tastes, but I think hating people for being interested in something you dislike is rather unnecessary and harmful especially because it is not a one-sided process. TV shows and magazines tend to incite those media circuses from what I can tell.  

Anonus,
I do not care for celebrity gossip because I think it glamorizes attention and encourages people to be vain. I also think things like the existence of paparazzi type behavior are very disconcerting and I believe that an obsession with  celebrities makes those kinds of privacy-infringing behaviors not face harsher scrutiny than they already do. 

glennmagusharvey

Holy fuck yes.  This really annoys me too.

How about you losers, instead of following the news on Angelina Jolie, Charlie Sheen, and Natalie Portman, follow the news on Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, and Gabrielle Giffords?

"Bonus points for the Michael Jackson circus, which knocked protests in
Iran out of the mainstream news media."

Oh holy fuck yes.  Those bastards Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Ali Khamenei had better be thank Michael Jackson for dying at a highly opportune time for them.

Gelzo

To be fair, I think the people who follow this stuff to the exclusion of actual news tend to not be interested in contributing to policy anyway, so in some cases whether it distracts people from important issues can be a moot point. This kind of stuff is entertainment, and it's more appealing to follow a narrative centered around an individual than a large group, that should be obvious from what we see in fiction.

But yes, entirely too many resources go into this, and it creates bad role models.

snowbull

You know, I only just realized the connection between obsessively following who is fucking/marrying who and shipping.

glennmagusharvey

Gelzo: I don't mean for policy stuff, but what I mean is, political news has a bunch of telegenic people doing variably stupid things too, why not follow them?

That, and for those people who follow sports statistics--why not follow election polls and fundraising totals?

Anonus

@Gelzo

The resources thing is what I dislike about the intentional disconnect between the CNN and HLN brands, too. CNN has been trying to position itself as "objective, hard news" (and, to me, fails at this), while HLN is now their garbage-dump ghetto for celebrity gossip, tabloid trash, and the like. Probably not really related, but I wanted to get that out there.