What’s the role of technology in the relationship between celebrities and their admirers?
This is anecdotal, but I feel there is a strong relationship between celebrity worship and technology. While there has always been celebrity worship, technology has taken it to a heightened level. Prime Time news programs, entertainment “news” shows, the Internet, etc. allows fans to get almost any amount of information about on almost any celebrity and almost anytime. This “instant” fix probably reinforces and deepens the “addiction” people have to celebrities. It does this by promoting in people the illusion that we can actually know and develop a relationship with celebrities. In essence, people seem to confuse having a lot of information about a celebrity with genuine intimacy. But now, more than ever before, technology allows fans to “get closer” their favorite celebrities – that is, the psychological and social “distance” between fans and celebrities is getting progressively smaller. — What might be some of the implications of the tabloidization of news? Is a diet of infotainment
