Celebrity culture

Many journalists, writers and cultural critics think that Western society has now developed a celebrity culture, in which the public pay a high level of attention to those considered celebrities and aspire to become celebrities, often through reality television and appeal to the mass media. Almost all of those who write about the celebrity culture condemn it.

Critics of the celebrity culture point out that this is perhaps a sign of a decadent or intellectually unhealthy culture: television, newspapers and magazines devote extraordinary amounts of time to talking about the behaviour, dress and relationships of celebrities while spending less time covering political issues of significance. Members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in the United Kingdom stated that many of their pupils aspired to be famous "for the sake of being famous", and expressed concern that students saw celebrity as the primary means of success and deprioritized the importance of school work when, for most people, education is a far more beneficial way of building a successful career. Frontman for British indie rock band Blur, Damon Albarn, said very similar things: "[the celebrity culture is] creating a mindset that suggests you can get something for nothing and that it's easy to acquire status and fame".