Todays obsession with fame

People are stupid! I want to be rich, not famous.
Fame slowly destroys your life!

I agree with you, except for one thing. It was actually much worse before. Nowadays it is just easier to reach more people with the internet, so many can try their shot at having a big break.

But let me tell you, 10 or 20 years before, people would truly humiliate themselves just to appear on TV. People today actually expect to earn money with fame. Check old MTV spring break specials and you will see how low humanity can get.

Now that is something else. Creative fame (books, science, exploration). I support such fame! Those are the people that we need to praise. Not reality-show idiots.

So, it's still that bad? Somewhere, in the 2000's, it would have had to have been either the mid or the late, I had a bizarre obsession with being famous. I wanted to live LA/Hollywood, etc.

Time has changed. I have a change and have since moved on. If I do become famous, I will be the type of person that 1. Always wears clothes that hide my appearance so, that I can't be recognised when I go without those said disguises and 2. Keeps to self, never does interviews, never performs live, etc.

Well social media has brought the celebrities even closer to the public which has had both positive and negative offspin. The negative is that they get hyper exploited and the big industries like Hollywood find it easier to market and promote them. The accessibility to the celebrities that the public now has causes oversaturation and excess, turning the celebrities themselves into attention seekers for the sake of publicity.

I think there will always be this obsession with fame, with the tabloids, from at least a greater portion of the population, because many people are very materialistic and aspire for money, fame and the lifestyle that entitles you to. We want to see how they live as to live through them, it's this almost voyeuristic fantasy that resides deep in our psyche. Celebrities become role models and the envy of others.

YES THIS POSTER DOES UNDERSTAND! These so called celebrities are no different from our everyday people. They just like attention and have greed.

"I abhor the whore who calls herself reality, reality TV"

-Serj Tankian

Chasing fame as an end in itself seems a pretty strange thing to do.... Is it really that common that people want to be famous? Hopefully people are bit smarter than they seem on reality TV shows.

Yeah, but you don't see people discussing Nikola Tesla's contribution to the world, or talking about the Wright Brothers, or how television was created. Bet 90% of people don't even know who invented the television. Yet everyone watches tv... Or how about Shakespeare, H.G. Welles? No, they keep talking about that Kim Kardashian and the snookie. I don't even bother to learn what a snookie is, I just know it exists and it's what kids talk about.

I actually been trying since I was a child.

I hate it too, but unfortunately we live in a superficial world where people think that having a little money notoriety makes you valuable.

Personally I'd like to become famous as a singer songwriter, or an actor, but then, I can't write music particularly well, and I'm far too shy to be an actor, I'm content with just being another guy on the street

I just want to be mini famous maybe, like be on sportscenter for doing something funny or interesting

I'm quite happy living in cow crap. :)

It's clearly happening, and yet, I've never known anyone who wants to be famous.

I understand pretty much everything you say (apart from the bit about these shows being inherently degrading), but none of what you've said sounds wrong to me. It is the product of a consumer culture and it fuels a consumer consumer culture, and those things are wrong, but I don't think of shows themselves as an evil.