To really hate celebrities?

[MynameisWa]

Or perhaps just celebrity culture.

Watching Adele last night and seeing the faces in the crowd made me recoil.

Don’t get me wrong. Adele was great. It was just seeing all the overpaid, often pretentious and mainly hypocritical celebs bolstering one another’s egos in their little clique made me think I’d not care if I ever saw (most) of them again.

So, am I? Am I being unreasonable for taking a collective dislike to these people and their ways?

Haha, this thread is like Ricky Gervais when he was hosting the golden globes

I agree OP, I never watch any sleb programmes and if I do catch a few minutes of one I rarely know who the slebs are anyway. Bread and circuses for the plebs, or 'chewing gum for the eyes' as father Ted would say 😄

I think celebrities are less relevant now than they once were, and I suspect the golden days of celebrity are long gone. A mixture of social media making us realise they're just like us, and also making it easier for anyone to get famous even with no talent. With an ever present divide in wealth distribution its pretty gross when you have someone doing a job they love, that was probably just right place right time living a life of luxury, with more money than many could comprehend; whilst others are working hard, long shifts in a dead-end job to be counting pennies at the end of the month.

@ConsuelaHammock

I really don’t have time for ‘celebrity ‘ anything. I’ve never watched a reality show and programmes like strictly, celebrity bake off etc are never watched in my house. I know about them because I heard colleagues talking about them . If you’re an actor and you make a good movie I’ll pay to watch it but I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in who you’re shagging , how many children you have and with who etc etc IMO Celebrity culture is akin to the hunger games.

Thanks for saying what I was about to.

Only saw a clip when my dd showed me (she's a big Adele fan). Yes it's very cringe. And you know they won't all love Adele at all, and all the compliments / lovey stuff is most likely faked. It's great publicity for them all though.

I know BBC insist their stars attend things like this. But this was ITV I think, and not all the celebrities were necessarily from their stable?

I dislike the “celebrities” who are only famous because they appeared on a reality tv show or their parent/ex was a well-known celeb (like Amanda Holden). If they have talent then fair enough, but too many appear everywhere and I’m bored of them.

I had hoped the tide had turned during lockdown when celebrities started to appear irrelevant but we seem to be back worshipping them again.

Adele - always a private person, telling Oprah everything about her divorce.

Jessie J posted a pic of her with a positive pregnancy test then announced she'd had a miscarriage. That is a tragedy for anyone but I was astonished by how personal that is and it's just another Insta post.

Every single celeb ever has suffered from bullying, anxiety, depression, eating disorder, childhood poverty. Every single pregnant female celeb had a shocking and dramatic birth.

How about a celeb owns up to being a bully at school? Statistically, some of them would have been but no, they always have to be the victim.

Celebrity has changed forever due to social media, it used to be that there was an air of mystery about them, now it's a degrading competition between them all to get the most attention by any means possible.

Those who lecture us politically piss me off the most, multi millionaires pontificating about how the rest of the hoi polloi should live.

Sit in your mansions and keep quiet. Fine to work behind the scenes or contribute their vast wealth to causes they support but I don’t want to hear about it.

Didn't Emma Thompson's husband once lecture us on not paying tax as a protest or something? There he was on Strictly, shaking his arse in sequins for cash.

Emma flew in from LA to join an Extinction Rebellion protest in London.

@Heavymetaldetector

I felt like An Audience with Adele was lovely and that, but at the same time it was just a gathering of the rich and famous enjoying yet another perk of being rich and famous. And laughing and smiling and giggling while the rest of us can't afford heating and are terrified of getting ill and have to be stuck outside hospital in an ambulance for hour upon hour. I dunno. I mean, I know one thing has nothing to do with the other, but the times we're living in now I just feel like, there's not a lot to celebrate. Things are so bleak. It's not like the 90s when we all had shit loads of credit and housed were affordable and everything was OK so we could enjoy slebs without feeling like they were just on a completely and utterly different planet to everyone else. Nowadays there is so, so SO much suffering unless you really are super privileged. And I know I'm saying this from a council estate in a very deprived part of the North, so I'm probably feeling shittier about stuff than most, but yeah. It was just like, were all OK thanks, and now we're going to have a fucking brilliant time and you can all watch us. Reading too much shitness into things? Meh, probably...

Excellent post.

What do you mean by "celebrities" though?

Celebrity is such a vague and over-used word: it could be applied to a huge global star like Madonna or some two-bit influencer.

It could be someone whose fame is built on something tangible, like a talent for singing, or someone with a good publicity machine.

I think you may be hating on the wrong people. Celebrities for the most part are just people trying to get paid -- with varying degrees of success. The people you should be hating on are the people who tie themselves up in nots worrying about them and following them - ie us.

We're the ones who create and sustain it. And you're fuelling it here posting about it. If you hate it that much, turn it off and stop talking about it.

I felt the same about an audience with Adele...all very talented people( love Idris!) But ffs producers...read the room.
It would have been better to have keyworkers there....it was a bit self congratulatory tbh.
I do love Adele though...i went to her concert amd was a blubbering mess...so emotional and poignant...and beautiful!

The hunger games analogy is spot on.

I love this grumpy thread and have always felt the same about 'An Audience With' as if normal audiences aren't audiencey enough. I wonder if they'll put it on Gogglebox and then people can watch an audience with an audience with Adele.

The fact it was all celebs in the audience was the reason I didn't watch it. I hate those programmes. You know they are all sitting there hoping the camera will cut to them. The clip I saw of Emma Thompson was enough to make me realise I was right

@ThePlantsitter

I love this grumpy thread and have always felt the same about 'An Audience With' as if normal audiences aren't audiencey enough. I wonder if they'll put it on Gogglebox and then people can watch an audience with an audience with Adele.

"An Audience With" has always had famous people in the audience since they started doing them in the 1980s! That's the point of it.

What have they actually done to hurt you? No-one forced you to watch the programme.

Peter Ustinov's was probably the best.

Yes I know @PAFMO. I said I've always felt like that. I don't want to see slebs being fake humble sycophants to other slebs.

Well Madonna has pissed me off this week by boasting about the people who worked for free on her latest project. She's a multi millionaire, she can afford to pay people

They where working as interns for the magazine,not Madonna.

I have never been able to watch An Audience Withs or anything similar. I could probably watch ones from the distant past now (but don't have time).

Individual celebrities don't bother me (Adele seems lovely and talented) but when they're all together socialising I can't bear it. I can't even watch Graham Norton's show and I like him. Can never watch an interview and switch off if they are on the radio. I can just about bring myself to watch the odd Strictly with my kids but can't stand the talky fawny bits.

I don't like the way the word sleb and star are bandied about.
Madonna is a star,Rylan not so much.

Adele I like some of her songs,and she comes across so funny in interviews.
So why do all her songs sound the same and about the same subject.

I'd be wary if I was her partner,the next album will be about them.

So fans have to pay several hundred pounds to see her in concert, but a bunch of millionaires get to see her right up close and personal for free. Sounds about right.

That’s what pisses me off about celebrity freebie marketing as well to be honest. Why the hell should I spend a small fortune on an artipoppe baby carrier or a mamas & papas pram when they give them to rich celebrities for nothing?!

An Audience With Adele... a celebrity circle jerk of the highest order.
As Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction so wisely said,
"Let's not start sucking each other's dicks quite yet."

I went to see Coldplay (with a guest appearance from Ed Sheeran) a few weeks ago. We happened to be in the posh bit so Danny from The Script was sat by us. He genuinely enjoyed the concert, was dancing around but not in a look at me way. Ditto Rick Astley and some other celebs.

Then there was Jamie Dornan (presumably invited via the Dakota Johnson connection). He sat on his own with a bodyguard, looked bored senseless throughout, played on his phone and didn't clap once. Why bother coming? It was an amazing concert (at a small venue). He was quite visible and I'd have been quite offended if I was Chris Martin. (I'd quite liked Jamie Dornan until then).