Column: Celebritities vs Real world

 

By Kusum Aryal and Kathryn Anderson

According to People-press.org, an overwhelming majority of the public (eighty-seven percent) says celebrity scandals receive too much news coverage. Celebrity culture is distracting the public from more important issues, such as terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and global warming.

Magazines, newspapers, and social media are the sources that are feeding into this harmful extravaganza of distractions. We have reached a point in our society where we begin to get so involved with the lives of celebrities that we start to lose touch with the world around us, and we start to lose sentimentality.

Bri Arriola wrote on the Odyssey Online, “Through a personal experience, I can say that all I could talk about was the Mariah Carey incident, but in the morning I heard about an actual disaster in Turkey. The next day, I sat in front of the television, trying to piece together what was happening to the other side of the world. I read the headline: ‘39 people killed in terrorist attack at night club.’ It took me awhile to realize that I had a more emotional response to Mariah Carey’s failure, than to the deaths of others in another country. I looked to other news outlets to see if they were all reporting on the Istanbul attacks, but all I could seem to find what was the cause of Mariah Carey’s performance error. It puzzled me that America was so concerned about what happened to a celebrity, rather than an actual current event.”

Opening Instagram, you see many fan accounts devoted to celebrities. They are updated every ten minutes. What the celebrity is wearing, who they went on a date with, and even what they had for dinner.  Some of these fan accounts should be reported for stalking.

Day to day, people are getting updated on the trivial things going on in a celebrity’s life; meanwhile, there are wildfires spreading in California, the eruption of volcanoes in Hawaii, and lava bombs being dropped onto boats of innocent tourists.

Larry Atkins wrote,“Celebrity Journalism is like crack. Americans are addicted to it,” and let’s just say he’s correct.