Fake Fame
Source: Jailed Instagram model wants to trade secrets for freedom
Hardly a day goes by without some breathless headline about the tribulations of some ‘model’ or ‘rapper’. A detached observer will note that the ‘talent’ which these individuals purport to possess are rather marginal at best and likely delusional at worst. If every youngish woman who has ever posed with duck lips and a bikini are models then the USA must be overgrown with models. If every black person who has ever managed to rhyme two words in verse is considered a rapper, then also, the US is filled to the brim with music talent.
That the media continues to characterize and glamorize the misadventures of very ordinary people as being somehow interesting is a reflection of the ‘look at me’ culture that has taken hold in the last decade of social culture. We can lay the blame partly at the feet of the explosion of media conduits that need to fill their pipelines with sensational stories, but really, the root is the proliferation of social media. Thanks to certain infamous people with no useful skills other than to point a camera at themselves in various stages of undress, an entire generation of impressionable youth, mainly women, have been emulating that kind of narcissistic exhibitionism.
Young women are seemingly obsessed with posting images of themselves, usually in coy or provocative poses. Some are attempting to emulate the template of the Kardashians by pushing the boundaries of tastefulness in order to gain ‘followers’. Yes, this is a real thing. As we know, much of this is clearly fake news. A recent article exposed the resulting sad reality behind the fake world that this kind of delusion can cause. The majority of people would never be able to emulate the kind of lifestyles portrayed by social media stars…including the social media stars. In the linked story above, would anyone care if the headline read ‘jailed person wants to trade secrets’? Probably not, but put the word ‘model’ in there and it captures a prurient audience. If we want a more truthful headline, it may be, ” reasonably attractive woman wants to get out of jail by telling a story”.
Similarly with the liberal use of the label ‘rapper’. When a story emerges about the most recent criminal activity by someone who happens to be black, they are invariably characterized as rappers. As if that would make their criminal activity less heinous. Violence in the Black community is so rampant that reporting on it loses its impact day after day after day. However, if the headlines somehow include ‘rapper’, it may cause some to actually click on the story. Sensationalism and hyperbole sells and this truth has never been more evident than in today’s zeitgeist. These days it seems as if people don’t as much make the headlines as headlines make the people.