Thursday, March 20, 2008

Fake Paparazzi for the Insanely Infamous

The Today Show ran a segment this morning about some positively revolting practice involving ordinary folk and fake paparazzi. It's bad enough that someone is peddling their services as fake paparazzi, but so much sicker that some mad pathetic losers are actually buying it.



For a corporate event or someone's B'ar Mitzvah, okay, okay, I get it. But the women on Today, who were simply out for a night on the town, got their jollies by acting like somebody famous with an entourage. At the end of the segment, one of them giggled like a school girl as a fairly nice-looking guy at the bar tried to guess her identity. I think these posers may have hired a limousine service and fake bodyguards for full effect, but truthfully, I was so nauseated after the first fifteen seconds, I tuned out.

Now to top everything off, we have bloggers coining and analyzing this demeaning and demented phenomenon, as if token respectability could make this freak show any more palatable. Have we really sunk so low as a culture that reality shows are no longer good enough vehicles for everyone's fifteen minutes of fame? At what point do such troubling developments cross the line of "having fun" and enter the realm of insanity?

Ah, the good old days. When being followed by crazy insane photographers was the price of fame for real celebrities. Now non-celebrities have priced fame as crazy insane photographers following them. In the future, when everyone will have their own personal paparazzo, there'll be no one left to hound the real celebrities. They'll be the ones with hats and sunglasses walking down the street so quickly, they won't even blip the radar.

In the not so distant future, ordinary people will be too busy scanning the wannabes to notice the real deal. Which is good because finally, real celebrities will get to shop in the malls and buy their own groceries.