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There are upsides. Back in the day, magazines and tabloid newspapers had a lot of influence over celebrities, because they controlled who had access to the general public. There was a lot of obsequiousness and moral compromise on the part of celebrities to promote themselves with magazines and tabloids. Today, with the internet, it's easy to keep in touch with fans via Twitter, Facebook, and so on, while things like Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok provide paths to fame without going through the traditional press.
If anything this is worse.
The most online celebs can make money without traditional media now, yes. But, in other ways, they have the worst of all worlds; they are directly subject to real-time feedback from fans and the parasocial relationship seems to lean way more in the direction of negativity than the sycophancy that might happen if they only had public interactions.
And, sometimes, they don't even get that much money for their troubles - Lindsay Ellis was driven into depression for an upper-middle class life.
Yes, A-list celebrities get to ignore (or try to ignore - see the Naomi Osaka case for the self-serving attempt to cut out the media using mental health claims) the traditional press more. But they hear from fans more and fans also see them more (previously they made deals with tabloids to keep a lot of this shit out) which increases the burden to conform.
Johnathan Majors is probably going to lose out on tens of millions due to a story that escaped before any of the traditional fixers and handlers could do their work. Decades ago it was more likely to become a story we hear about today "did you know Johnathan Majors assaulted someone 30 years ago and no one reported it?".
But I'd still like to be rich and famous though.
I'm not sure that this is a good reflection of tabloid-celebrity relationships in the past, which seemed to be extremely abusive in some cases, and always with the threat of abusive intrusion in the background.
However, I don't dispute that the situation is bad for celebrities. Personally, I wouldn't mind being rich, but I would happily do without the fame.
I didn't mean sycophancy amongst the tabloids but the fans who "drag" online celebs on Twitter.
I think a lot of people on Twitter are way more toxic to their favorite Breadtuber or streamer than they'd be if they met them.
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