From zero to hero: the phenomenon of accidental celebrity

Celebrity today is increasingly a by-product of being able to gain attention for oneself, writes Justin Thomas

Jeremy Meeks has gone from unknown prisoner to global celebrity in less than two weeks. Meeks was arrested in California on June 18 on weapons charges. The Stockton police department, responsible for his arrest, posts arrest photographs on its Facebook page. Meeks’s high cheekbones, piecing blue eyes, chiselled features and pouty pose ensured his mugshot went viral.

Within days of posting, the photo had elicited 89,0000 likes on Facebook and inspired comments such as: “He didn’t know any different. I could turn him into a ‘model’ citizen. Where can I pay his bail?” Some of the felonious hunk’s admiring fans have even used their Photoshop skills to attach his headshot to the bodies of Armani-suited male models. An unlikely star has been born; Jeremy Meeks has become the world’s latest “accidental celebrity”.

Celebrity was once synonymous with talent and ability. Individuals were celebrated for brains, brawn, dexterity or some other tangible differentiator. Today, however, celebrity is increasingly a by-product of being able to gain attention for oneself – people become famous for simply being famous. Consider the spate of celebrities spawned by reality TV shows in the past few decades. If the media gave birth to empty celebrity, then social media gave birth to its close cousin: accidental celebrity.

Psychologists interested in celebrity and celebrity worship suggest that a key factor driving the phenomenon is what they term “parasocial interactions”. These are essentially one-sided relationships, where one party – the fan – knows a lot about the celebrity, while the latter is typically totally oblivious to the fan’s existence.

Twitter is a great example of societal drift towards parasocial relationships. Many Twitterati have legions of followers who potentially know lots about them: what they had for breakfast, what they love, what they hate and so on. Many of these Twitterati (not all of themconventionally famous) may, in turn, only follow a tiny few of their fans. I would argue that if your followers massively outnumber the people you follow then this is parasocial networking, rather than social networking (see, for example, @KanyeWest, who has 10.6 million followers but follows only his wife, @KimKardashian).

The celebrity however, almost by definition, cannot exist without fans. But what is it that leads some of us – many of us – to become fans? And what entices a smaller minority of us to enter the deeper, darker realms of pathological fandom?

The current thinking suggests that most people in affluent western nations engage in relatively healthy, low levels of celebrity admiration, primarily for simple entertainment and social reasons. Following the latest information about the admired celebrity provides a benign but pleasurable diversion. On a social level it can be a conversational icebreaker and a form of social bridge, especially for younger adults still developing their interpersonal skills.

However at the deeper, darker levels of fandom, admiration morphs into worship. The rapper Eminem in his 2000 hit Stan expresses this idea brilliantly, where he waxes lyrical about a fan’s unrequited outpourings of admiration ultimately leading to a tragic double homicide and a suicide.

The psychological research exploring fandom, indeed suggests that some fans can become borderline pathological. They come to over-identify with the celebrity, obsessively collecting information and memorabilia with the single-mindedness of a drug addict. They might also begin to harbour unfounded beliefs about having a special connection to the object of their affections.

These excessively intense parasocial relationships (extreme fandom) are viewed as arising from a lack of meaningful relationships with other people. Such relationships are often associated with excessively introverted individuals, and with those experiencing difficult social circumstances. Perhaps a parasocial relationship is better than a bad relationship, or no relationship at all?

In an age of rising divorce rates, where we continually lament the demise of deep, meaningful relationships (“face time”), are we perhaps in danger of becoming a society of fans? A society where an elite few command disproportionate amounts of attention, while the online, but disconnected masses, seek solace in massively one-sided relationships?

I suspect our accidental celebrity, Jeremy Meeks, will have no shortage of offers from commercial entities keen to cash in on his fame. For sure, if the handsome villain were to set up a Twitter account today, he would be flooded with individuals happy to enter into a deep, but meaningless, parasocial relationship with him.

Justin Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Zayed University and author of Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States