The Cult of the Celebrity and Social Networking

            This post is an analysis of social networking websites, but this time I will specifically focus on the concepts of heroes and the cult of the celebrity in the analysis.  This analysis will explain why or why not the concepts of heroes and the cult of celebrity apply to social networking websites and peoples’ use of them.   It will also explain how these theories describe and evaluate social networking websites.

            I feel the theory of heroes does not really apply to social networking websites. People generally use these websites to gossip, keep in touch with friends or acquaintances, or to make themselves feel popular by “friending” as many people as possible.  I do not feel the theory of heroes is proper in analyzing this popular culture topic.  I do, though, feel as if the cult of the celebrity can be used to analyze social networking websites and the reason is because there are now so many celebrities that participate in social networking websites and allow their fans to follow them.  For instance, many celebrities now “tweet” and their fans can follow whatever they decide to “tweet” about, which is usually their daily lives, but the reason so many people choose to follow celebrities on these websites is because of the cult of the celebrity. 

            Celebrity’s lives are so fascinating to people because celebrities have fame and they are rich and lead exciting lives.  This makes everyone else want to know what these celebrities are doing.  The cult of the celebrity has become so big in popular culture because people want what they do not have and celebrities appear to have everything society wishes for, money and popularity.  Many people think if they had these things they would be the happiest people in the World, but they do not stop to think about the many rich, famous celebrities that are unhappy.  People tend to look at the exciting part of a celebrity’s life and that is why they want to follow them on social networks.  It might take them into a World where they are a part of that celebrity’s life and take them out of their everyday World, even if only for a little while. 

            The cult of celebrity theory when applied to social networking websites brings me to feel as if people join these sites, not only to follow celebrities, but also to try to gain a little celebrity status themselves.  For example, there are people on Facebook with hundreds of friends.  Do you really think these people have hundreds of people that they are actually friends with?  It seems as if the new popularity contest is to see how many people you can be friends with on a social networking website.  Maybe the more people you have as “friends” the more popular you feel, which may go along with the “fame” celebrities have.  Having hundreds of “friends” may make someone feel one step closer to celebrity status, which seems to be what so many people are chasing after.