fanatomy: all about fan culture and psyche.

Majority of the comments on this article are very interesting.

But first, a survey just for fun.

As a fan, you expect to know
a) everything
b) some things
c) nothing
about your idol’s personal life.

If you answered “everything”, please rate in a scale of 1-5, 5 being the highest, the things you ABSOLUTELY must know:
a) private life (family, significant other, friends, pets)
b) career decisions
c) health status
d) criminal history, if any
e) address, phone number, social security
f) secret social media accounts
g) credit card debt
h) tax and liabilities
i) investments and stocks

If you answered “some things”, please choose three you want to know:
a) what they like (food, music, pets etc)
b) what they dislike (food, music, pets, etc)
c) what they ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between
d) their hobbies
e) what clothes they wore to bed
f) the colour of their underwear
f) what time they sleep
g) who they date

If you were to encounter your idol, you will:
a) approach and ask for an autograph. this happens only once in a lifetime!
b) freeze where you are, you are too shocked you got this lucky
c) grab your smartphone and go on Facebook live
d) live tweet the momentous event
e) wave as they pass

If you approach your idol, how much distance would you keep from them?
a) no space. we must be nose to nose.
b) just a foot, enough to study the pores on their faces.
c) 1.2 meters away (where social space begins)

Stalking is normal fan behaviour.
a) agree
b) disagree
c) undecided

When your idol gets into a scandal, you…
a) become depressed
b) are cool about it, it happens. shrugs.
c) stop being a fan

Rate the following from 1-5, 5 being the most scandalous:
a) dating
b) marriage
c) rape
d) unscrupulous business practices
e) shady political ties
f) having a sponsor
g) bad personality

Celebrities who get into scandals…
a) deserve it
b) are bad rolemodels
c) should retire
d) should be given a second chance

Do you think celebrities should be accorded privacy?
a) yes
b) no
c) undecided

It is right to demand full disclosure because fans make and break celebrities.
a) true
b) false
c) undecided

Full disclosure and the lack of privacy are part of being a public property.
a) true
b) false
c) undecided

I agree with the Knetz’ comments on the NetizenBuzz article.
a) yes
b) no
c) neutral

Social media has really blurred the lines of people’s concept of privacy. We all think that we can share everything, including what we ate for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between, and we are not even celebrities.

So if normal people like us tend to overshare trivial matters and feel compelled to tweet our little crisis at work or Instagram our stubbed thumb, imagine what we expect celebrities — considered as public properties — to share.

Everything starts from us after all. How we perceive the world and our expectations of it comes from our core values. If we think nothing about sharing gross tidbits about ourselves on the Internet – with about 4 billion netizens across the world — we would think nothing of knowing every little thing about celebrities, whether we like them or not.

But of course, the need to know is far greater if we like a celebrity. It makes us feel close and have that intimate connection with someone who doesn’t know us beyond the collective noun: fans. We are their friends, or even family, or we like to think so anyway.

We are also fast to flock like vultures when a scandal happens. All the better if it concerns someone we don’t give an iota of f*cks about, yet we care enough to keep ourselves updated and give our two-f*cks-worth of opinion. The schadenfreude mentality has strongly taken root in a digital world where scandals happen everyday and forgotten, hopefully, the next day. Maybe it makes us feel better about our pathetic little lives if bad things happen to celebrities who earn billions, especially those untalented lot. There is justice in this world after all. Hah.

Truth be told, do we really care about the privacy of celebrities? Perhaps not, when we don’t even apply that concept in our own lives. And certainly not when these celebrities are the ones who broke it first by baring their lives and spilling their guts on social media. We are quick to validate them, even their bad choices and bad hair days, and clamour for more like little hungry self-entitled birds chirping and asking to be fed with more innocuous posts that become fodder for the further breakdown of what privacy means in our modern society.

Privacy? Please, celebrities only demand for it when it does not benefit them, when they need to be protected from the maelstorm they’ve created. The rest of the time, they’re more than happy for you to know they ate cabbage for lunch, scaled the Himalayas, got so drunk they can’t even spell and then plead for understanding the next day. Or claim their account was hacked.

But such is this world we live in that privacy has become a carrot for those who act discreet and a stick for those who misbehave.

Related post: just sayin’ #7

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