Abolish Celebrity Culture
Doja Cat doesn’t know how to “celebritate.”
In a TikTok posted to her 23.4 million followers, the pop sensation mentioned that her fans often forget she’s a celebrity, adding comments like, “You’re so unapologetically you, queen.” At the end of the video, Doja Cat jokingly asks what she can do to be a better celebrity. “I’m concerned,” she says, chuckling, “I feel like I’m doing my job wrong.” Actually, she may be doing it perfectly.
The lifeblood of celebrity culture are parasocial relationships: one-sided connections with media personalities in which the consumer expends all of the emotional energy, time and care. These “relationships” often form subconsciously, a product of the celebrity’s hypervisibility. Often, they are stimulated by a fictional connection, like something about the celebrity that reminds the user of themself or the influence that a particular role, speech, or song has on their everyday life.
The vast majority of Doja Cat’s TikTok videos are completely candid, often shot from the celebrity’s bed or couch sans makeup. She does goofy dances, tells jokes and participates in popular TikTok trends.
By straddling the line between glamor and mundanity, mystique and familiarity, stars like Doja Cat keep fans not only close, but adoring. Supermodel Bella Hadid sometimes wears Zara, and it-boy Timothée Chalamet can be spotted riding his bike through New York City’s West Village like any average NYU student. Doja Cat herself might be sporting a diamond-clad, custom Versace gown at the 2022 Grammys, but her comments before accepting the award for “Best Pop Duo Performance” proved she still has to pee like the rest of us.
These celebrities know you, it feels, almost as well as you know them. After all, they thank you for your support, love you for your loyalty and recommend a cool, new product that’s going to be perfect for you. This misconceived recognition and hyper-emphasis on relatability adds another dimension to the parasocial relationship: the attachment between celebrities and their followers are thought to operate within the same guidelines of mutual respect and genuine connection that real-life relationships do.
Take the Jordyn Woods and Tristan Thompson scandal. Thompson was in a relationship with Khloe Kardashian at the time, and the couple had a baby together the year prior. Woods was best friends with Kylie Jenner, Khloe’s younger sister. Woods and Thompson’s kiss at a nightclub in 2019 propagated a fervor among Jenner-Jordyn bestie fanatics, who felt all the betrayal, sadness and regret elicited by the situation as if directly involved themselves. As the public hurled hate comments like rotten tomatoes with a readiness recognizable as misogynoir, Wood’s image transformed into that of the backstabbing, jealous friend. She had wronged not just Kylie, but the duo’s millions of fans as well. Jenner and Woods, once lauded by the media as emblems of true friendship, found themselves at the center of the public’s personal negotiations with loyalty, forgiveness and treachery, judged by the masses as the moral authorities they never claimed to be.
The nature of these parasocial ties can have serious ramifications. In the wake of the Astroworld tragedy, many critics of celebrity culture recognized the disaster as a direct product of the parasocial zeitgeist. Travis Scott has a history of sparking concert chaos, making callous commands from the stage like a despotic puppeteer with indifference towards the safety of his devotees. Despite numerous chants from the audience to stop the show at Astrofest 2021, Scott continued to perform as the swarms of people gave way under the pressure of their own bodies. Meanwhile, Houston City officials decided not to immediately halt the show for concern that a riot would ensue, a fear legitimized by several concert-safety consultants knowing the extremes fans will go to for their heroes.
In reaction to the Astroworld news, TikTok user @kingsnacks posted a video saying, “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but your favorite rapper, favorite actor, favorite singer, favorite TikToker, favorite Instagram influencer does not love you.” At their most alarming level, parasocial relationships breed celebrity worship and idolatry. “The sooner you realize that,” @kingsnacks continues, “the sooner you will also realize that you do not love them.”