The Perils of Celebrity Worship

I try to live my life by my own standards as much as possible, but it’s important to have role models or people to look up to, as long as it’s healthy and doesn’t drive every decision and assessment of yourself. If done right, having role models can help drive ambition, and also be a useful guide to living life. Role models can come in many forms, the more realistic ones like friends, family members, or colleagues, are more commonplace. But one type of role model that I can’t understand, and which I, of course, have as well, is the celebrity role model. It’s also the most powerful one, yet the most unrealistic and dangerous one as well.

I started thinking more about how we idolize celebrities last week when news came in that Novak Djokovic, along with a bunch of other tennis players had tested positive for COVID. This was a direct result of a tournament organized by Djokovic across Croatia and Serbia, which would have still been alright if not for the packed stadiums, kids days, and an after-party at a nightclub, where there was clearly no regard for any of the guidelines any of us mere mortals have been painstakingly following for the past couple of months. This is someone who is an idol to so many, and while I’m not a fan of his play, I am a huge tennis fan, and so can’t disregard his achievement and stature in the sport. That’s where the adulation should ideally end. His views on the COVID pandemic have been careless and troubling, to say the least, but he still has hordes of fans who latch on to his every word as the gospel truth and come out in their numbers to rationalize his views and actions and defend them on social media. I wouldn’t be surprised if a subset among them even manage to convince themselves that he, a tennis player, knows more about COVID than epidemiologists all over the world. Now, that’s dangerous.

I’m not immune to this mindless celebrity worship either. I idolize The Beatles too and have got caught up in more than just their music over the years. I know intricate details of all of their lives, through having consumed a number of interviews, documentaries, movies and books about them. I even wrote an article on how I wanted to be like George Harrison. In terms of what though? If I was a musician, sure I could aspire to maybe be as good as him one day, but what else? How are our lives even remotely similar in any way? Or why would I want to be like John Lennon? A hero to so many, he was a wife-beater, an absentee father to his first son, and by all accounts, not the most pleasant of people to be around. It doesn’t sound like the kind of person anyone should aspire to be. His music brings me joy, and that’s fine. Shouldn’t there be a separation of his music from him as a person? At what point must the line be drawn?

This is morbid, but I don’t know why the death of celebrities affects us so hard either. I personally dread the day when Paul McCartney dies for example, but if I think about it, I don’t see why it should be so. I don’t know him personally, his music will always be there for me to listen to, so what difference does it make if he’s alive or not? Yes, it is sad when anyone dies, but why is his death such a big deal for me when there are hundreds of thousands of people dying every day? I don’t have an answer.

Of course, looking in from the outside, their lives look fancy and glamorous, and especially as a child, it seems like they have everything you’d want to have when you grow up. So there’s a lot of vicarious living that goes on, which is not the worst thing in the world, as long as it remains make-believe. Comparing your life to theirs is unrealistic. It’s unhealthy to obsess over every detail of their lives, someone who doesn’t know you exist, probably never will, and likely wouldn’t care even if they did. Is it worth expending so much energy on learning about them, fighting for them on social media, and trying to do what they did or do, despite their circumstances being so much more different than ours? Wouldn’t we be better off trying to ideally chart our own path in life, or rather look at those who are closer to us, something more attainable so we remain grounded?

We’re all good at different things, some more than others. Celebrities are people who happened to be exceptionally good (not always) at a certain skill that also happens to be something a lot of people enjoy. That’s it. There are far more important people in your life, the most important of them all being you.

Thank you for reading!