Why Do We Care About Celebrities?

Every media channel in America is chock full of news about celebrities.   Why do we crave gossip about people we don’t even know?

Redditor subtextual offers this explanation:

Gossip about celebrities exists for the same reason religion exists – because it is a very powerful meme. Humans evolved to fit about 150 people into their sphere-of-people-they-care-about (or monkeysphere if you’re familiar with that article), and by gossiping about those people with others the people in a community are able to confirm their community’s morals and standards. Most of us no longer live in small villages of about 150 people, so celebrities serve as a proxy – that is, while you and I probably don’t know ANY of the same people, we both “know” a bunch of celebrities. By having a “national dialogue” (or gossipfest) about these celebrities, our society is working to preserve its “values” (e.g., adultery = bad). Similarly, when you and I talk about a celebrity, we are coming to a consensus that that type of behavior is bad (or good, or none of our business, or whatever we decide about it).

Personally, (perhaps like many on reddit), I’m an introvert and have room for about 8 people in my monkeysphere, so I don’t spend much time thinking about or caring about celebrities. I also tend to be progressive, so it is not in my nature to work hard to preserve status quo traditions through methods such as expressing alarm at ‘immoral’ celebrity behavior. But condemning people who use gossip as a method for attempting to preserve the status quo as ’silly’ or ’stupid’ or ’sick’ seems to be ignoring the larger social purpose of the human fascination with celebrities.

If you want to opt out of the meme, or even be agossipistic (if I may create an analogue to atheistic), great. But it might help to think about what you’re opting out of, why it exists, and whether or not you are really opting out or just replacing the people you talk about with “other” people/things that fit better into your monkeysphere (e.g., can you think of one or two things that redditors essentially “gossip” about?).

The “monkeysphere” he cites is also called Dunbar’s Number.