The Culture of Celebrity and Junk Culture

3130 Words13 Pages
The culture of celebrity is an increasingly pervasive phenomenon that is made even more treacherous in the fact that it touches almost every American’s life. While many hold the conventional belief that celebrity dogma and vicarious living are mere entertainment and thus harmless, the public’s rising propensity towards celebrity worship and mindless ingestion of manipulated and often inaccurate information set forth by the media and popular public figures greatly contributes to the rising anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism, and overall incompetence in detecting our willful consumption of junk thought. If society is unable to recognize the repercussions celebrity culture will have on our collective ability to distinguish legitimate news from the erroneous and furthermore continues to advocate a general reluctance to transpose our rapturous enthusiasm from Britney Spears to issues far more worthy of our attention, such as war in Afghanistan, the climbing rates of foreclosure and unemployment, and global warming, the consequences will become progressively severe. The current and future implications of this seemingly innocuous movement include debased public discourse and politics, the proliferation of misinformation and erroneous reports relating to health issues and more, a diversion from intellectual endeavors, and an overall rejection of rationality. Celebrity culture and our nation’s infatuation with it is playing a significant role in producing a generation that is increasingly devoid of a defined criterion to assess the precariousness in conforming to the credo of a dumbed-down society where intellectualism and rationalism have far less value than the recklessly enticing ideas set forth by the mouthpieces of junk thought. As the media becomes more indulgent of the demands of the public than ever before, celebrities are gaining a broader stage to voice their
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