I have been sitting on this for days, noodling it in fact. Holding it up, shaking it like a snow globe, watching as the thoughts swirl about in my mind. Problem is I keep coming to the same awful conclusion, we have disintegrated
DangerousCreation.com Image
into spectators of the very worst kind, we are ghouls.
What happened to the notion that some things are private, reserved for the privacy of our homes, for behind our bedroom doors? What hiccup in our social norms has occurred making the propagation of the very worst in human foibles and weaknesses provender for our rubbernecking. How is that we have created an entire group of do nothing and know nothing celebrities simply based upon their complete and utter lack of discretion.
Shouldn’t our lives be segregated into what is appropriate or proper for public consumption and what is more appropriate behind the doors of our homes or locked gates of hospitals? I ask this question in all seriousness, without an iota of snark anywhere. I ask this after having been blinded, my eyes bleeding traumatized by the view of Khloe Kardashian and her husband Lamar Odom and their bedroom antics and ultimately epic failure attempting to spice up their marriage with a sex swing. Gad, really did I need to see this? In an innocent search for something completely different, I promise I wasn’t searching for –
Sex Swings, Swinging Sex, Swings, Sex, Khloe, Kardashian, Lamar, Odom or even EPIC FAIL
I don’t even remember what my search parameter was that brought the pictures to my screen.
Why I ask did I need to see this in graphic detail? Apparently, it wasn’t enough for them to share the intimate details of their marriage bed. Nor was it enough to know of their purchase, or that they felt their sex life needed a lift? Did I need to be entertained informed of their actual attempts at the use of their new bedroom toy and their ultimate failure to use it properly?
I then am reminded the entire reason the Kardashian sisters are even in the public eye, is the ‘leaked’ sex tape of Kim Kardashian and some person named Ray J, the less talented younger sibling of Brandy. I am further reminded this is not the first ‘infamous’ celebutante who made her name with an accidental sex tape release (Paris Hilton).
Again, what happened to discretion?
We are a nation of voyeurs, so focused on the antics of the famously dysfunctional that we have created an entirely new genre of ‘entertainment’. We are fascinated by Reality Television—
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The list goes on and on, I counted over one hundred (100) ‘Reality’ shows on the list I found. Everything from dating to weight loss, nothing absolutely nothing was off-limits.
The famous for being famous, the once famous and now infamous and everything in-between are fodder for our insatiable need for prurient fulfillment. Have our lives become so lacking in color, or is there something else at
P.T. Barnum courtesy of Wikipedia
work? Are we so jaded the only thing that diverts us is the catastrophes of other lives. Have we become so cynical we will pay to watch in living color the lives of other people spin out of control, we will laugh as their disasters pile up one after another and their lives hit the skids for all of us to marvel at. We applaud their train wrecks, happy it is them not us.
Our entire entertainment industry has become one huge freak show the likes of which P.T. Barnum would have been envious of. I on the other hand am dismayed and continue to ask, what are we come to, what are we becoming?
Are we toxic?
QBG_Tilted Tiara 
I’m not even sure that jaded is the right term. Jaded denotes a sense of having experienced and become bored with the mundane. “Reality” television, on the other hand, masks the mundane as affluence or novelty in an attempt to make it seem more than it is. If more people would experience Life on their own, to a significant degree to even approach being jaded, I doubt these shows would have much of a following.
BTW, be careful with that bleeding eyes thing…. Someone might try to make a reality show about it! LOL
I suspect you might be right, yet we continue to force our ‘entertainment’ into more and more disturbing paths. Jaded is the only term that comes to mind.
Bleeding eyes… bleeding brain? I think they would not like the result of a reality tv show with me.
What I have to say about this post is… YES!! Thank-you for saying what so many of us are thinking – these celebrities need to start keeping some of their stuff as personal. I don’t know how much more of the Kardashians my poor eyes can take!
I suppose it is all relative isn’t it? As long as there are people willing to pay, they will be in the spotlight. I read somewhere Kim’s appearance pay is in the neighborhood of $100,000. Gad, can you imagine being paid that much just to show up?
Wow that’s some serious money. Just to be seen! When that money could be used to help homeless people etc…
You missed my all-time hated worse one, “Toddlers and Tiaras” other wise known as “Parents Pimping their Kids Up”.
I actually chose to ignore that one for this blog as those children are not pimping themselves.
I hate those parents so passionately were I to see them out and about it would be difficult for me not to beat them with a tire iron.
Hi! I agree – I was watching (accidently, while dusting) The Shahs of Sunset, and they were celebrating a girl’s birthday with a colon cleanse — all LIVE in TV. Really??? WTF? Wow.
I would happily do a sex tape for $100,000…if I just had to show up…then again, it would freak people out more than the colon cleanse, I’m afraid.
$100,000? That is all, you are selling yourself cheaply. Look at the millions some of these do nothing / know nothing women have turned their natural inclinations into. Kim K is now contemplating a career in politics for the love of all that is holy and good.
And the answer to that question, is, simply put, no, we cannot.
The human population has more than doubled in the last 50 years. I know this is so because in an interview of 2011, the highly respected and highly acclaimed zoologist David Attenborough said that when he started broadcasting, the Earth’s population was 3 billion. In the same year as the aforementioned interview, said population reached 7 billion.
He (Attenborough) went on to point out that “this population increase cannot continue because earth is finite in size” – the relevance of this to the subject matter in question is that sheer weight of numbers combined with the advent of globalization make the likelihood of this being stopped highly dubious at best.
Nations of the east now embrace with ease those privileges of western culture that they could once only dream of achieving, India, China, etc.
Depite the moral rectitude of some, that sheer weight of number has, is, & will continue to provide a space in which the prurient, the puerile, the decadent and the sophisticated take on a growth and evolution all of their own – with inertia that is directly proprtionate to the supply/demand for such things.
You leave not knowing whether to weep, rage or simply stomp off in a snit.
It isn’t that I am a prude, I am not. It is that I simply believe there are things that should be left to our imagination.
Earlier & elsewhere, in reponse to this blog article, my fine friend Valentinelogar asked: “Are we becoming toxic in our search for more puerile forms of entertainment? Just asking.”
Just as with former world powers (such as Rome) where the sophistication became merely exorbitant decadence, so it appears that each follows a similar route.
The difference being that with the advent of globalization (particularly accounting for the internet’s influence) the same things occur, history repeats itself. Problem is that in this day and age, its something that is able to saturate the masses much more quickly, finding its way to people without them even seeking it (as the article proves).
This being the case, where to sate such appetites for sensationlist reasons, to outshock/out do any one else and stand out the furthest in any way possible, producing moral implosion in much the same way that other pre-globalization empires have: I can’t say it would be entirely false to answer ‘yes’ to Valentinelogar’s question.
That is precisely what I think, we are on a straight decline nothing soft, no sand nothing at all at the bottom to cushion our fall. Worse is the simple idea it is a great distraction from what is really wrong.
I think the answer is yes as well, the real question should be is can we stop it.
Val
It certainly is getting worse – but it is nothing new
Fama is the Roman Goddess of Rumor. Her name in Latin means just what it looks like, “Fame”, with additional meanings of “Reputation”, “Ill Repute”, “Public Opinion”, or “News”; it is derived from the Latin verb feri, meaning “to speak”.
The earliest recorded piece of gossip was roughly 3,500 years old, and was found on stone tablets dating from 1500 B.C. which chronicled a Mesopotamian mayor having an affair with a married woman,”
In 1452 when Guttenburg invented the printing press he was immediately sued by a businessman for libel. Enter the lawyers. They have been with us ever since.
As the new presses diseminated the wisdom of man across the world so too did the scandsal sheets spread with their gossip and scandal.
It is was in 18th century London where the gossip industry really took off. The birth of the tabloid (getting it’s name, by the way, from a tablet of printing stone) let loose the exposes we have been used to ever since.
After WW2, the tabloids spread across the Atlantic but devpoted most of the pages to luird details of car and aeroplane carshes, wierd science, alien abductions and macabre medical news. But sales started to flag. So mags like ther National Enquirer
toned down the gore in an effort to appeal to housewives in the checkout aisle.
Celebrity gossip took over by the late 1960s, as the papers feasted on Chappaquiddick, Jackie Kennedy’s remarriage and the death of Elvis. The Enquirer paid a Presley relative to snap a picture of the King in his coffin.
Which brings us to Whitney Houston.
The tabloids’ readership shifted to Television with OJ Simpson trial and then the internet took off. In a bid to survive the technological onslaught the tabloids resorted to the Phone and email hacking of murder victim in the Uk and possibly 9/11 families in the US that has brought the entire industry to it’s knees.
Yet for all the bemoaning by the public about the evils of gossip, they continue to consume it with an ever increasing apittite.
As Oscar Wilde said,”There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”
Ah, but you address a different part of the industry that of gossip about people who are in the public eye already for their talents, whether limited or not. While I might bemoan this form of gossip as well, it is different than what I am talking about, that of those who are famous only for being famous, no talent other than acting badly.
Thanks though for the history. It is welcome and interesting.
Ah hah! I see now. We were doing different things there. You were talking about the ubiquitous air-head wannabees whereas I was putting off cleaning up my office.
I better get on with it.
I am always doing that (cleaning office that is). I hope you will stop by again. I did truly enjoy your addition!
Val
The scary part of so called ‘reality’ TV is the huge audience for this crap. Reality? Really? I don’t think so. I couldn’t be bothered. Maybe I’m weird but I don’t know who most of these celebrities are let alone their names. Who cares? I don’t.
Now if you want good laughs, tastefully done, Woody Alan’s “Bananas” is a very funny movie with Howard Cosell narrating the consummation of the marriage scene.
John
I seem to remember that one. I will have to watch again. It has been so long since I have actually sat and watched a movie. I am a bookworm myself and will sit and absorb them for hours.
With the exception of one episode of Housewives of Beverly Hills I haven’t watched any of this garbage. I watched this episode because a friend was on it (one of the wives is his best friend), after watching I told him I couldn’t do so again. Begged him not to ask me though he has been on several other episodes.
Oh, I agree we have sunk low. Every time I’ve heard of leaked sex tapes, I couldn’t help but wonder: When does a couple get out the camcorder, or more sophisticated equipment to tape their antics to record what? Why? It would seem they have lost their way and don’t respect each other or why they got married in the first place. (Case in point—but just one of them).
You and me both. I have never understood why they would want to record themselves. What are they going to watch later to improve their technique? It isn’t like these are vacation reels you share with friends….eeww
I don’t know, the whole issue just boggles my mind. Makes my head hurt.
I refer you back to my original assessment: Zombies. Brainless, seeking brains, but in all the wrong places. Willing to run headlong into danger following nothing but our noses.
I have no doubt why I do not watch the insipid drivel which passes for television entertainment. Shame I am exposed to them in the grocery line.
Red…and for more than my hair color.
Gad……yet exposure is there for even the most innocent of searches. I am not a prude, yet my brain seizes and my eyes bleed when forced to watch this garbage trot across my internet.
I weep bloody tears.