You have to admit it, when you hear news or gossip about your favorite television celebrity you immediately find your way to access any information about it. Though you are in the midst of your work or are travelling, when your ear catches the sound of a familiar name and a few words that either include or invoke the word 'SCANDAL', you hurry at the first opportunity to the world of the googley-interweb and focus attentively on scouring through any details you can find of the account. This is reality. This occurs in our society today. The question however how and why has this obsession come about?
For certain, there are not any openly evident reasons behind why people are often so obsessed about the lifestyles and lives of certain celebrities. Social experts have made researches about this strange hobby and gradually, were able to uncover covert solutions within the society itself.
According to experts, common people see themselves in their favorite celebrities and their obsessions are sometimes open evidences of their inner drive to become like the famous people they favor. These connoisseurs agree that at extreme situations when people are suffering from a low-level cultural depression, the thought of them being able to buy a particular product will uplift their spirits. The same goes with celebrity obsession. When a celebrity is highly regarded, some people find in them the qualities they seek in themselves and because of this, they admire that celebrity and therefore gradually become obsessed.
It may sound strange but experts also agree that today's generation consider fame among the most important things to achieve in life. It could be that this can give us a clear background look behind why people (especially the youth of present days) are so obsessed with the celebrities. Furthermore, the motivation for following the lives of the famous often leads to increased isolation from the real world so in other words, escapism is one of the reasons behind idolization. The strange thing is both these reasons conflict in terms of the human drive - to become another, to be famous and achieve a pseudo-immortality is a life defining drive. Humans want to live forever therefore they value any substitutes. Escapism is a regression away from the self and imitates the journey to a safe place. Freud would say this was the journey back to the womb and beyond, to a point where the individual did not exist and can be classed as a death defining drive.
No matter what state of mind you are in therefore, idolizing celebrities is the only thing society offers that satisfies all of our basic instincts.