Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury both died of AIDS related illnesses in the 1980’s. Both of them were homosexual and so to avoid alienating a public largely uneducated about alternative lifestyles; both of them pretended they weren’t. Their friends and family knew about their illness, their friends and family fiercely protected their privacy, and ultimately, both men died with dignity. The tabloid magazines of the day hinted at the possibility they’d contracted AIDS as a result of their sexuality, but hashtag outRock or Instagrams of Freddie in leather didn’t pique curiosity and invasion like it might today.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the Internet in 1989. His brilliant, knighted mind, coded and programmed and logarithm-ed and spat out the information age upon an unsuspecting Generation X who were still trying to get their heads around typing, snorting cocaine and Nintendo Gameboys. Tim BL gave the world instant access to anything and everything at the click of a (right or left) button. Like a perfect storm, around the same time, some lonely Finns crawled out of an ice-cave in Lapland and gave every human being the opportunity to carry an affordable and lightweight mobile phone.
Today, in 2013, we can find out anything we want to know, from anywhere we might be, even 30,000 feet in the air, and we can share it with the entire world. Instantly.
In light of recent events I wonder, is that such a good thing?
When Nigella Lawson married Charles Saatchi, she promised to love and honour him. He promised to stick with her in sickness and in health. They had both been married previously; one assumes they knew what they were getting into, beyond the stupid-expensive paintings on the living room walls and a lifetime of chocolate puddings. Their marriage vows said nothing about sharing each other with the masses, about exposing their most private moments to millions, about becoming the unwitting and unwilling poster-girl for domestic violence.
Before the girls shout me down, to be very clear, I am not condoning domestic violence, in fact, I’m not even talking about domestic violence.
I’m talking about a woman and a man who are married. She is quite well known because she bakes cakes and he because he buys and sells French Impressionists. Despite the rather sensitive subject matter, I don’t care about their private lives, I do not want to know, more to the point, I don’t need to know. I want more cakes and more cookbooks. What she does when she is not teaching me how to dribble and smash and ooze and dollop, is her affair, not mine. That this was daubed on the front pages and made out to be a newsworthy story shows how we are losing our way, losing our focus, losing our shit.
The cult of celebrity has done something dangerous to the world. Fatally combined with the power of social media, instantaneous communications and hysterical teenagers, we spend more time discussing Beyoncé Knowles’ haircut than we do our own.
I also do not care that Simon Cowell is having a baby or the marital status of the unfortunate woman he has impregnated with his smarmy sperm. My life does not need more pictures of Simon Cowell in swimsuits lounging upon luxury yachts in St Tropez. The role he plays in my life is to be Simon Cowell; snarky, snide and funny with David Walliams on the telly. Simon Cowell is an entertainer, a television personality, a step above belly-button lint and certainly not more worthy of journalism than Edward Snowden being granted asylum in Russia.
I suppose, in Simon’s case, one could argue that he deserves it. Making nobodies into somebodies is the source of his phenomenal fortune. He took 5 boys who could barely sing in tune, taught them to smile and swagger, gave them each a pair of skinny jeans and a microphone and transformed them into the five most popular hairdo’s since John and Paul. In fact, so popular are the five luscious lads of One Direction, they are now owned by the Internet. After their website crashed under the weight of hormone charged adolescent discontent, GQ may consider asking twitter what the cover headlines should be before suggesting that Hirsute Harry is playing for both teams.
And this is where it gets interesting…
Nigella never asked for her photos to be splashed across the front pages, but many of the celebrities we read about do. Most of Simon Cowell’s empire has lit up the world powered with the firebrand of social media. The boys themselves aren’t talented enough to sell their wares, but accompanied by stories in papers, hashtags and blurry Instagrams, they became a worldwide phenomenon in less than three months.
Using the lightening speed of the internet to publicise a pop group is hardly going to bring down the social fabric as we know it. But it is the precursor to what will.
Just beyond the grainy shots of Harry kissing Taylor Swift, or Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart hiding behind their baseball caps, a fetid world of scandal, voyeurism and self-promotion has noxiously multiplied and taken up all the space left for real information.
The celebrities and their business have infiltrated that wonderful cyber-powered universe that TimBL invented to educate and connect every human being. They took his w.w.wonder to use as their own electronic billboard. And then the scum of celebrityland stumbled, bumped their heads to free the Botox from their brain and realised that they could create popularity from nothing.
Justin Bieber’s mother, enamoured of her little man and lacking the company of sentient human adults, obsessed over his cute pout and melodic trill. Rather than sit in her living room and encourage him to finish his homework, she posted videos of her little protégé on YouTube. There he was discovered by record company executives too lazy to get out to a bar and sign an actual musician. Bieber and his Momager then hashtagged and hashed their way to global domination.
Miley Cyrus, not content with encouraging Hannah Montanas to take ecstasy and twerk used twitter to shame her father into admitting to extramarital affairs. Raven Symone tweeted her coming out and Amanda Bynes has Instagrammed every second of her mental decline and eventual incarceration in a psychiatric facility. Disney graduates and Popstars are relatively innocuous but when The Prime Minister of Australia tweeted a Selfie with a shaving cut this week, I was perplexed. How will this end?
If you use the internet to create love, it can be used against you to create hate.
Whether he is pissing in a mop bucket or spitting on his fans, Bieber’s image is pasted onto our consciousness from Helsinki to Harare. It backfired. The images of Bieber sprogging over his adoring minions went viral within a nanosecond. Nor he, nor his mother’s lawyers, nor his record company could find a way to wipe those images from the public retina. Bieber, the boy born on YouTube, may just die on Twitter. Hashtag #heshouldhaveswallowed
Arguably, Bieber can sing and dance, and by contemporary standards, is handsome. In our new world of instant information, talent is an optional extra to becoming the most famous person in the world.
I give you, the Kardashians.
Barack Obama is the leader of the United States of America. This week, in an actual political interview, with actual journalists, where he was actually talking about actual American policy Barack Obama referenced Kimye.
Within hours of the offending syllables exiting his resonant throat, his words hit the front pages of every online publication. I could argue that he did it on purpose, that he knew that by referencing her, his words would be heard. That he may of considered this is a sad indictment of our collective priorities. No one documents what the President of the USA has to say unless he includes a fly away statement about a pair of media hungry celebrities who’ve contributed nothing more to humanity than some poorly designed handbags and a back catalogue of expletives. To be fair, he was saying something very similar to what I’m saying here.
Tim BL made the Internet so we could Google the answers to pub quiz questions, not stay attuned to the intrauterine activities of a family whose alphabet does not know letters beyond K. The guys at Nokia commercialised mobile phones so that we could find each other in a crowded train station, not so that we could vine a video of a drunken woman in a bus. We have information and we have access, but why can’t we use it for good?
Let’s all get down on our knees in supplication.
We are saved.
Thank you Stephen Fry.
Instead of taking over the internet with photos of Dzohkhar Tsarnaev’s bleeding torso, or the cell where Ariel Castro’s doomed prisoners were held, this week’s internet was almost sucked empty by the 750 words penned by one of the most brilliant minds of our time.
Recognising that no one was listening, that there was not enough space in the news for the truth about the abuses of LGBT Russians, Fry wrote to the world, and the world heard. He tweeted, he Facebooked and he blogged. His letter was picked up by every major news agency within a day.
Fame is useful when used for good. Being Popular can be leveraged to make a point, whether it is one you or I agree with or not. Being Popular wins elections and wars. It serves to unite humans around a common cause for the betterment of all.
Being popular is not one’s life goal but the outcome of the excellent work one does.