Celebrity fascination tied to lower intelligence

Title of the post is very misleading. The article uses word "worship", while "fascination" not even once. You can be fascinated by something in healthy bounds.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

This feels much too close to pop science to be believable.

My theory about celebrity culture is that it is deliberately attempting to replace normal human interactions ('normal' being something like pre-industrial village society, where most people knew the same ~100 people or so for much of their lives) with a media-constructed social circle of 'celebrity influencers' of similar size.

For this to work, one has to consume a lot of entertainment media, which likely uses a limited vocabulary and very little if any symbolic logic (the intelligence tests in this study used these two characteristics).

For maximum dystopian creepiness, imagine a 'personalized celebrity-based AI chatbot community' for such people... programmed with the correct opinions on all matters.

Apparently this is how they judged how "into celebrities" a person was. I mean these questions seem geared toward the "creepy obsession with a celebrity" approach, which is hardly the same as thing as "public figures I follow online, respect, or who's work I enjoy" and also completely different from the "I read the tabloids and follow celebrity gossip" types. So not sure that's really what most people think of based on the title:

https://www.scribd.com/document/356931328/Celebrity-Attitude...

"The problem with western civilization is the oedipal complex [...] Very briefly, the Oedipal complex shows up in the way people orally fixate to external sources of authority, suckling on their (president's/sports team's/teacher's/guru's/celebrity's/corporation's) ego instead of moving the locus of authority within themselves. This practice forms many incomplete people into a transpersonal blob, collapsing individual autonomy into a flow of resources to, energetic investment to (emotional/advertising/replicative), and political assent to being ruled by, and moreover becoming literally a part of, the authority."

https://www.reddit.com/r/sorceryofthespectacle/comments/5sd9...

Based on the methodology this should not be used to draw conclusions, this study is at best an indicator to conduct further research on the topic. The title of this post is too strong for the conclusions:

> These findings *suggest* that there is a direct association between celebrity worship and poorer performance on the cognitive tests that cannot be accounted for by demographic and socioeconomic factors.

My theory is celebrity worship is a substitute for kings and royalty fetishization which is a substitute for tribal chieftain fetishization and worship.

We don’t even know our own relatives that well anymore yet my Mom seems to know all this bizarre stuff about Kate Middleton and we live in America. People seem to crave gossip so they can discuss archetypes.

The discussion here seems to be going well, but on other places on the Internet I have only seen this study referenced to reinforce some kind of group superiority complex. It's kind of gross to think that other people are stupid for caring about people you don't care about.

But that excludes tech celebrities, right? right?

Those R-squareds are really low.

I’m nearly 40 and am a huge follower of celebrity culture and have been since I was in high school. I listen to a few really good pop culture podcasts and it’s a part of my life I get a kick out of.

Celebrities are just interesting to me and I like learning about them, the clothes they wear, where they live, what their lives are like, etc. Maybe it’s daydreaming about what it’s like to have a different life? Who knows? But it’s a fun way to spend my time.

And to be honest, all of my time is just frittered away so it doesn’t really matter what I do with it.

But to be fair, I’m also quite dumb (check my comment history for confirmation).

Presumably the study was focused on worship of celebrities in the entertainment industry, i.e. movie stars. One wonders if the same pattern applies to worship of celebrities in non-entertainment industries, like tech.

However, IMO tech celebrity worshipers are more like zealous religious followers than movie star worshipers. I guess we've known that since the early days of personal computing, though. Even the early marketing was built around that tendency (i.e. the 1984 Apple ad).

I've been trying to tell people how strange parasocial relationships were for over a decade now. Caring about the personal lives of strangers is just baffling.

What about if you are only fascinated by foreign celebrities?

Monuments are awesome, they are great for stories to be told, and for remembrance of long past peoples and events. But placing anyone alive on a pedestal isn't healthy. Worst even placing oneself on a pedestal.

Not sure if there are studies on this, but all my life I've seen an exaggerated fascination regarding musicians, actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, sports players or journalists. I've felt it myself, but the older I get, the more I try to exchange fascination for moderate respect.

But I'm not alone on this, people care about other people, for the wrong and correct reasons. We all are looking for our identity, and usually look for traces of it in other people. IMHO this is the greatest problem of our time. Perhaps it has always been a problem, but a more obvious one now that we are all connected.

Anyhow, I wrote this as context for my own thesis: "Fascination with celebrities doesn't have to do with intelligence", it is narcissism and loneliness rolled into a single expression. As evidence I've seen plenty of smart people fascinated with Elon Musk, Angela Merkel or Queen Elizabeth II.

Important topic, that needs to be talked, but I feel moving it to the realm of "smart people vs fools" is very unproductive, and basically missing the point.

I'm fascinated with my turds. I wonder what that makes me?