If you’ll quit worshiping celebrities, their antics will quit shocking you

By David McElroy · August 27, 2013

Remember when Madonna was shocking and outrageous? Back in the early ’80s, she combined sexuality with religious imagery in ways that shocked and angered many people. (Personally, I thought Weird Al did it better in his parody than she did.)

Who else has shocked you? Lady Gaga and her meat dress or her recent nude video? Or maybe you’re old enough to remember when John Lennon shocked people by proclaiming that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

When I got online Monday morning, it seemed as though the whole world was talking about something scandalous that Miley Cyrus did on an MTV awards show Sunday night. On Facebook, it seemed for awhile that half the posts I saw were about her — some outraged, some disgusted and a few defending her.

I honestly don’t know the specifics of what Cyrus did to get everybody upset — and I don’t care to know. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t watch television, but this isn’t something I’d have been watching even if I did still watch TV. It’s apparently popular with millions of people, but it’s beyond my comprehension to understand why. It’s not that I think I’m too good for a pedestrian medium such as television or something like that. I just don’t think that participating in most of pop culture is very good for me — and I don’t think the culture that’s emerged is a healthy one for anyone.

Maybe there’s always been a popular culture that has shocked older generations. That’s definitely been the case ever since the mass media have been around. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems as though celebrities seem to be going to ever-increasingly lengths to shock people — to change their reputations, create talk and make them more valuable in the long run.

So why does anyone care what Miley Cyrus does? She’s a 20-year-old with no special claim to fame other than some singing and acting roles over the past six or seven years. Why would millions of people — literally — have been talking about her Monday? Why do these non-entities have this sort of power over the public?

They have the power because you worship them and follow them like royalty. You treat them like they’re important. Maybe not you personally, but “you” in the sense of the public. The media treat them as though they’re news because millions and millions of people watch anything put on television or posted on the Internet about them. But don’t blame the media. Blame the public. It’s the market driving their decisions about what’s important.

The United States and Great Britain are probably about to launch an attack on Syria, but the media were too busy pushing the Miley Cyrus story to care too much about that. And why would they? They’re giving people what they want. Although this is satire from the Onion, this fake explanation from CNN about why the Miley Cyrus story was the lead story on CNN’s website is too close to the truth to ignore.

I’m not outraged by whatever Miley Cyrus did. I just don’t care. I’m much more concerned that so many people care what she did than I am about whatever silliness or lewdness a 20-year-old did for attention.

If you find it as silly as I do, tune celebrity culture out and encourage others to do the same. Don’t wait until they shock you. Enjoy their movies when you want and enjoy their music when you want, but don’t worship the stars. Don’t pay attention to their private lives. Don’t turn them into heroes. You’re giving them way too much power over our culture when you do that.

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Something small just made me happy. The specifics don’t matter, but I found myself smiling and I felt a kind of warm joy filling my heart and mind. In that brief moment of ecstasy, I felt the irrational desire to talk with a particular person. It wasn’t a calculated thought or a rational want. It wasn’t even that I wanted to tell the person about this particular thing. I simply felt ecstatic joy — and I somehow connected that feeling to this person. I can’t explain it. If we’re wise, we’ll pay attention to such moments, because the instincts of our hearts and minds often know more truth than our conscious and rational brains do. The same thing can be true in moments of great pain and suffering. If we pay attention to who our hearts are drawn to in such moments — of extreme joy or extreme hurt — we learn something about ourselves. I don’t know why. I only know that our gut instincts sometimes understand deep truths about ourselves that our rational brains haven’t yet figured out.

It started out as a satirical joke, but some friends liked the idea, so now it’s a real Facebook profile picture frame. If you’ve never heard of Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, let me explain. One of the dumber elements of social media is that it allows people to publicly signal their goodness and virtue to others — without actually doing anything of substance. So you see photo frames around profile photos saying things such as, “Moms Against Racism,” as though they’re standing up against those evil moms who are in favor of racism. It’s meaningless virtue-signaling and it deserves to be mocked, so I made a frame and published it on Facebook’s frame system today. If you go to your own Facebook profile picture and add a frame, then search for Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, you can select it. About a dozen of my friends are using it so far. It’s just fun satire — at least until Facebook decides it “goes against our community standards.” Or something. It’s just a fun way of mocking something that deserves to be mocked.

When I first told you about the project that would become DavidMcElroy.TV, I thought it would launch by mid-May. Since today is the last day of May — and I’m still not close to launching a finished product — here’s a brief update. The graphic above is the latest rough mockup of the format, but it’s still subject to change. Even the logo isn’t yet set in stone. Motion graphics are really difficult when you’re starting from scratch. Sunday night, my camera stopped recording, so it has to be sent off for repair. I have an older camera that I’ll keep using for testing, but I can’t launch without the better one. The audio system developed a low buzz this weekend that has me puzzled. I’ll be taking all the equipment over to the home of a local audio engineer who’s volunteered to help me figure out what I’ve done wrong. On top of all that, my on-camera performance seems to get worse with each test I do. There are days when I think I’m crazy to be attempting this. And in truth, I probably am insane to do it, but being crazy has never stopped me before. I’m at least a month away from launch and it could be a few months. Thanks for being patient — and thanks for all the support and enthusiasm for the project that you’ve sent my way.

I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

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