The disenchantment with celebrity culture has been brewing for years. The pandemic exposed the different rules that the rich and famous live by. While regular people spent their lockdown working form home in small rental units or risking their lives as frontline workers, celebrities complained from their mansions and likened the experience to that of incarceration. Economic conditions continue to worsen, we have seen our wages stagnate and our grocery bills rise all while celebrities and influencers continue to share their jet-setting lifestyles and luxury goods on our feeds.
The Met Gala showcases these wealthy people, draped in diamonds, encased in high-concept art pieces that they cannot even move in as they make their way up the stairs to the event that costs $75,000 per ticket. Though the event itself is a fundraiser for a noble cause, viewing wealthy people play dress up for an event that costs more to attend than most people make in a year garners disgust for many. Comparisons to The Hunger Games, particularly the fancifully dressed residents of the Capitol delighting in the entertainment of children murdering one another, are frequent. Such parallels spoke to many social media users this year in particular as the event took place simultaneously with Israel’s invasion of Rafah.
In response to general feelings of resentment towards celebrities and their wealth as well as specific condemnation of celebrities’ silence on the genocide, several Tik Tok users proposed blocking celebrities including Pablo Artic who now seems to go by the handle @blockout2024 and @ladyfromtheoutside who proposed a “digital guillotine” or “digitine”. The idea is simple, unfollow and block celebrities and influencers on social media to take away the revenue that they earn from their accounts through advertisement. Some advocate for the blocking to be permanent, others intend for it to be until celebrities express their support for Palestinians, ideally accompanied by donations.
TikTok users joined the blockout movement, sharing their own blocklists, checking if their favoured celebrities are included in other’s lists, delighting in celebrities’ accounts’ decreasing followers. Some have also shared their critiques of the efforts. Some question the effort’s efficacy. Others say that it centers celebrities instead of centering the cause of helping Palestinians. One video questioned the motives of those pressuring celebrities to speak out. The motivations should be wanting people with resources and influence to support Palestinians because it is a cause that is important to us, however, some people seem to want their favourite celebrities to speak out so that they can be marked as “good” and relieve their guilt of potentially supporting someone who does not care about ending this genocide.
These attitudes towards celebrity culture remind me of the moral crusade against celebrities that I witnessed growing up on the internet, Your Fave is Problematic. This Tumblr account compiled lists of the problematic things that celebrities had done from Lady Gaga to Louis C. K., Mel Gibson to Miley Cyrus. Often individual items alone did not constitute a deathly blow, only when taken together could the events seem damning enough.
Despite my Tumblr years representing the birth of my awareness of social justice issues, I did not consider most of the evidence based on allyship to the affected groups, I simply did not want to be allied with people who were viewed as “problematic” lest I be labelled as such myself. But I would not pass up the opportunity to pass along that judgment to others. I could denounce the interests of others by branding others as “problematic” like their “faves”. For example, I had aligned myself with the time-honoured tradition of senselessly hating that which was popular among teenage girls despite being one myself. While girls at my school fawned over John Green’s books and reposted black and white edits of “Okay? Okay.”, I studied the Your Fave Is Problematic post about him which included both criticisms of the contents of his books to how he got his now wife to first go on a date with him. I had never, and still haven’t, read any of John Green’s books but I felt righteous to silently judge my peers who enjoyed his books, not because I had critically analyzed them and had reasonable critiques but because Green was problematic and therefore they were problematic for reading his texts. Thankfully, I am no longer a teenage girl dripping in a mixture of self-consciousness and judgment for others but I worry about those who fall down a similar trap of moral purity for the sake of appearances.
I was recently reading The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell. She mentions that the rise of celebrity culture coincided with people losing trust in institutions like the government and the church. Today, fandoms are a main sense of community in many people’s lives and the celebrities that these fandoms form around can be people’s leader, saviour, lover, and friend. People’s attachment to celebrities can be particularly strong when it is from young people who are figuring themselves out and looking for role models to make their own identities and personalities legible through. The admiration and identification has gone far beyond wanting to share a celebrities haircut or to be a pescetarian like they are. Many young people want total moral and political alignment with their favourite celebrities. They themselves want to be seen as moral pure people and to do so, all that they interact with and consume must be similarly pristine.
Social causes are rightfully important to people. People do not want to financially support people who do not support human rights or are not allies to communities that they themselves are a part of. But expectations of alignment or moral purity by celebrities is unrealistic and unachievable. Celebrity status does not mean that people are socially educated or have access to real life experiences that would form compassionate values and politics. One could even argue that achieving a certain level of wealth excludes someone from being moral at all. Just because someone sings well, is a good actor, or has a million followers does not mean that they are also a good human being.
I am not advocating for separating the art from the artist, I think that we should separate ourselves from the artist. I am not pressuring anyone to support celebrities regardless of what they have done. I think that certain people, people who are racist, who are rapists, or who are domestic abusers should not have celebrated careers. I would think that that could be agreed upon and yet there are too many examples to list of those who continue to be working, possibly even beloved, actors, musicians, and influencers. You do not have to give your money or support to celebrities who do not align with your values or who will not speak up about this genocide. There is a line that everyone will have to decide for themselves for what kinds of attitudes and actions will make you not want to support a celebrity.
I think that there is also something to be said for people who look to their favourites celebrities and do not expect them to be moral or political leaders or even examples. Who listen to artists and enjoy their music without checking to see their political associations or possible past scandals. For the Taylor Swift fans as rabid for the easter eggs and new albums as any other Swiftie, but who acknowledge and express their disappointment with scandals from her political endorsements, humanitarian silences, to her ticket prices. Even though Your Fave is Problematic fits into a timeline between supposed demands for “political correctness” and contemporary “cancel culture”, as I pulled up the account to write this, I realized that it did not advocate for the black and white thinking I thought it had when I was younger. On the page “Now What”, they clarify that you can still like your “fave” and consume their work even if they are problematic, as long as you also recognize and don’t excuse that they have done problematic things.
Our divestment of celebrity culture should not start and stop with blocking and unfollowing. I do not think that many of these people deserve our money, they also do not deserve our devotion or our sanctification even if they finally do the right thing and speak out for Palestinians. We should not be expecting moral leadership or the saving of humanity from someone with ten million followers. Or, I guess 9.9 million now.
For more on fandoms and celebrity culture, see my video about parasocial relationships in the Taylor Swift fandom