The Twitter Obsession: The Cult of Celebrity

In this day and age, almost anyone can become a celebrity. While they might only be a celebrity for only a day, or a week, or a month – our culture seems obsessed with other people’s lives. Take Octomom for example. She’s such a celebrity that my spell check didn’t even underline the word as a spelling error. The question is why is she a celebrity? Because she has too many children that she, sadly, cannot care for alone? Was it because she gave birth to 8 children at once through faulty judgment and a desire to be famous? She is a celebrity because our culture made her a celebrity. We became obsessed with watching the train wreck of her life unfold before our eyes. 

This then begs the question, how do people become celebrities? In relation to Twitter, people become a celebrity after a certain amount of people become obsessed with following their tweets, thus elevating them to celebrity status on Twitter. There is a need in our culture, for some reason, to inform people of our every move, thought, idea, and event. People are tweeting about what they ate for breakfast, and shockingly people actually find this information interesting.

Celebrities tweet their “intimate” thoughts for the entire world to see in hopes of gaining a larger fan base. The notion that their tweets are actually their intimate thoughts is actually funny considering there are thousands of people reading them. Additionally, by using Twitter celebrities are able to extend their fame beyond their regional geography to reach a global audience. For an actor this could translate to a larger viewing audience for their films, which also translates into larger royalties from the films. For an athlete this could translate into global sponsorship or advertising campaign deals, which also translates to increased profits.

In our celebrity obsessed culture, Twitter gives fans a seemingly intimate connection with celebrities. This false sense of intimacy only bolsters the obsession of the fans and elevates the celebrity’s status. In the same way that our culture gobbles up the information in the tabloid magazines, we also gobble up the information shared by celebrities on Twitter allowing celebrities to gain new levels of status.