Let’s start out by saying I see the irony and I’m just going to look right past it. I can’t describe to you the feeling I get when I hate people. I love hating. I look forward to it actually, it can turn my whole day around. Hate gets a bad rep, probably for the best. But there’s two kinds of hate: the illegal and divisive kind and the wholesome, harmonic kind. You actually can healthily generalize a group of people to hate. For instance Disney adults, people who go under the speed limit in the fast lane, and white guys who post pictures of themselves in a club and caption it “blessed”. But today I want to confront one of my most frequent groups I hate, the celebrity “pick me” crowd on social media.
We’re more connected to the upper echelon than ever before. People jingle their virtual tin cans on Twitter and majority of the time are stepped over. It’s always been that way I suppose, it’s just more accessible now. All you need to know is how to download an app. People used to have to find celebrities in the wild like they were Pokémon. My father and I used to do it, in a sense. We were big baseball card show guys. But that was a father/son thing when I was a child.
Maybe it’s something that comes with age. The older I get the whole shock and awe towards celebrities seems silly to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not above it entirely. There’s still people I’d lose my shit over if I saw them walking down the street. But to constantly tug at their coattails on the internet is flat out embarrassing.
There are full on accounts who’s sole purpose is to get somebody they idolize to notice them. Twitter accounts entirely contrived of replies. What’s the payoff for reply guys? Alright let’s say they respond to your tweet. Maybe even favorite it. Do you think you guys are best friends now? Is this your big break? Or is it mission completed? You print out the celebrity’s response to you, frame it for your wall and call it a day.
The like button crowd on Instagram is certainly more reasonable but just as funny. Realistically speaking a guy is only liking an Instagram post for three reasons. Something looks cool as hell, their sports team did something, or they wanna bang the person. We all follow celebrities, sure. But lookings for free, tapping will cost ya. Instagram has done all you little perverts so dirty. Now whenever I scroll past a celebrity post it highlights one or two of my friends and 1million people like this. Makes my mouth water. What do you think’s gonna happen? Rihanna is going to comb through the eight million likes on her post to find you? You’re the one Rihanna’s been waiting on? Ok sure, let’s say she does. Then what? Rihanna is going to come to Hazlet, New Jersey? For what? So you can wildly underwhelm her in your childhood bedroom while your mom’s downstairs watching Wheel Of Fortune? Go get her tiger.
And you know what? These celebrities get way too much fucking credit for the times they do respond. Like everyone puts on this massive show when one of them comes down from their pantheon to grace us with a few words. I don’t want to shit on Christian Yelich cause I like the guy, but take his “Relax Roxanne” tweet as an example. Some weirdo lady tweeted at Yelich about her disappointment in him for posing naked in ESPN’s body issue. Just a weird thing to be upset about. Yelich quote tweeted it and said “Relax Roxanne” and everybody lost their ever loving minds. It wasn’t even clever? “omg Yelich just BODIED a woman on Twitter”, “public execution!”, “y’all wanna see a dead body?!”. T-shirts were made in it’s honor. But all it was was a very normal person response from Christian Yelich.
Celebrities don’t know something you and I don’t. They’re just very good looking. Or very athletic. If you need a reminder of “celebrities, they’re just like us” take a look at this Kanye shit going on. Whomst among us hasn’t had a friend see their ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend at Bar A and tried to start a fight. Ok, maybe we don’t make music videos picturing a cartoon beheading of them, but still. Restraining orders and custody battles are for celebrities too. With each Tweet and Instagram post, Kanye slips deeper and deeper into insanity. But like clockwork, there’s 20k comments chanting “Ye’s the goat!”
We’ve all seen our screen time reports. Or deliberately avoid seeing how much time we spent on our phone. Take it all in, there’s a lot to hate out there. Embrace the hate. Revel in it. But hate for the right reasons. Hate is for everybody, an inclusive community. Don’t weaponize hate? That’s hateful. Always, hate responsibly. And watch your tweets and likes, because if you don’t I will.
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