An interest in celebrity is for people who are foolish enough to invest their emotions into a lost cause.
I had waited years for this event. Finally, Philip Defranco was coming to Chicago under the premise that we, as the audience members, could meet him and some of the Sourcefed crew. Having watched Phil pour his heart out to the internet for six years, you'd bet that this was a highly anticipated event to me. But now, I almost regret going; there isn't complete regret only because of what I relearned as a result of the experience.
It feels worthless to be herded like sheep, and it feels even more worthless to be a single molecule being washed through a rush of water. But what hurts the most is knowing an individual so completely when he doesn't even know your name. And it gets worse-- Phil is the type of person who shares his real, genuine feelings. That's what he does. Through the internet, he offers his opinions and mental courses of action with respect to real topics. This has an intriguing and perhaps unintentional side effect--the audience gets to know him on a strikingly deep level.
Phil, in this case, is a celebrity in what I'm dubiously calling the "celebrity-audience relationship;" the use of the word "dubious" is due to the fact that this "relationship" is not a relationship at all, and here's why. A relationship is a situation in which two individuals connect with each other on an individual level, and getting to know someone on an individual level is the only way to care about that person. As celebrities put their talents out there, the audience begins to learn and understand these talents, which are facets of their being. In this way, an audience gets to know the individual aspects of the celebrity; however, the celebrity never gets to truly know the audience, though he or she may erroneously claim to do so. And with the role that Philip Defranco provides online, this effect is only exacerbated because we, the audience, get to know him frighteningly well.
The idea of celebrity has always felt bizarre to me, and I hadn't been able to articulate it as well as I can now that I have experienced "Defranco Does Chicago." The relationship between two people is how mutual understanding happens. And mutual understanding can grow into friendship, which then can grow into love. And all of these varying extents of interpersonal bonds are what make life feel magical. But the interaction between celebrity and audience is a one-way relationship; the audience members each care for the celebrity as an individual, but this sentiment cannot be returned. As much as a celebrity may try to display gratitude for the support and applause they receive from the audience, that celebrity cannot truly care individually about the audience member; that would involve understanding the opinions, information, and personal tendencies of hundreds thousands of people. In no way can a celebrity understand the audience like the audience understands the celebrity, and for this reason, there is no way to achieve a balanced "relationship" between these parties.
This imbalance of understanding means that a self-respecting person wouldn't want to get involved personally with the life of the celebrity, because the time and emotion invested will not lead to the celebrity returning the favor. I like to compare it to a marriage between a caring person and a psychopath; one person provides all the energy and sympathy, while the other is wholly incapable of providing the same in return. In either of these situations, though, I can't justify getting myself involved. Just as I should never invest my time and care into a psychopath who will never care about me, it is indubitably a waste of my time and care to invest emotionally in the life of a celebrity. You won't get anything back. As much as Phil says "I love yo' faces," I can never believe it, because he doesn't even know my face. And you have to know something before you can love it.
It isn't Phil's fault I had a shoddy time tonight. It is to no fault of anyone on the Sourcefed crew. It is my fault, for expecting that I would get some love in return. Phil and the Sourcefed people have no shortage of love in their hearts; rather, the problem is only that thousands of people know these moguls on a level at which the moguls will never know them. The idea of celebrities with fans always bothered me, but now I get it. And if these celebrities are incapable of caring about me personally, why should I care about them? It's harmful to get in the habit of putting all of your mental eggs in one basket for people who will never appreciate them. I have a lot to give, and you do, too; but I'll tell you what-- the famous people you follow won't be the ones who will applaud you for it. Don't live a life merely searching for others to applaud; look inside yourself for the things for which other people will be applauding YOU.
That's what I took away from all of this. The people applauding the movers and the shakers never got themselves anywhere. I need to stop looking up to people and start climbing up to the platform from which I will shower what joy and rapture I have to offer down on my potential audience. And hopefully, my audience will be one of whom I know every member individually, because my audience will not consist of hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people. My audience will be the handful of people I care about the most. And I will be as accessible to my audience as they are to me, because I will ensure that my audience will consist of people I trust. My audience will love me as much as I love them.
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