At first glance, we live under the absolute domination of celebrities. Former and future President of the United States, Donald tramp, spent more than a decade as a reality television star. Taylor Swift has just completed the biggest and most profitable pop music tour in the history of the world. The mass entertainment industry still relies on stars - ask anyone who waits in line to see "Zlica" on the holidays (Ariana Grande) or "Gladiator II" (Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington). And not to mention all the petty dramas of the beautiful and famous that we all continue to gossip about.
Perhaps, therefore, it is strange to make the completely counterintuitive claim: that we are leaving the era of traditional celebrity. And not only are we leaving it, but we are entering a new, uncertain era, in which fresh intolerance has appeared towards those who, even just a few years ago, were blindly adored.
Much of this comes from the youngest generation of adults, so-called Generation Z, and millennials under 40. Generation Z is perhaps the most misunderstood because it is the first to come of age at a time when the old monocultures have faltered. Many of them are too young to remember the dominance of cable TV, the golden days of A-list movie stars like Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt, or even the admiration once enjoyed by certain tech magnates like Steve Jobs.
Over the past five years, the mainstream media has run through various contradictory narratives about Generation Z. They were either too liberal, too "woke," liberal enough to vote Democrat to save democracy, or internet-poisoned and terminally right-wing, with young men so obsessed with podcasts that they voted en masse for Donald Trump.
The reality is more complicated, because all generations are complicated. Not all "baby boomers" took LSD and hung out in Golden Gate Park. But Gen Z and younger millennials are especially hard to generalize because they live in an era of fragmented culture. Tens of millions of Americans no longer flock to a television show that airs at a specific time during the work week, as was once the case with "Friends." They no longer get their political guidance from late night television shows like The Daily Show. Linear television is collapsing, and networks like MSNBC and CNN have been losing viewers since the presidential election ended. Hollywood, on the other hand, no longer occupies a central place in culture.
This is partly because there is no center - or it is weakening dramatically. Even celebrities who rose to fame through new platforms, including TikTok, are facing backlash. In a recent viral trend, TikTok users are invited to actively ignore various celebrities and influencers to prove how much power they have over them. The first target was a singer and dancer JoJo Siva, which has a huge following on social networks. Her number of likes on certain videos has dropped drastically. Gray is too rich to be affected, but the trend itself is significant and unimaginable even five years ago. Others like her should be careful.
Pisac You dig called it "personality fatigue" - the idea that average people, especially on the Internet, are tired of the rich and famous. Politically, people are suspicious of leaders or anyone who tells them exactly what to do. Although Swift and Beyonce still favorites, none of them significantly moved younger voters to the camp Kamale Harris, despite their wholehearted support. Left-leaning Gen Z voters were particularly furious at celebrities who did not openly condemn Israel's actions in Gaza. This distrust of elites is persistent, to say the least.
Into this void steps the ultimate anti-influencer, the 26-year-old Luigi Maggione. The alleged killer Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Manggione is enjoying online fame unlike any seen in recent history. His alleged assassination of a health insurance executive, who earned $2023 million in 10,2, was entirely political, but it crossed party lines.
When right-wing commentators like Ben Shapiro i Meta Volša condemned the murder, their comment sections were flooded with condemnations of the health industry and even support for the murder, before Manggione was identified as a suspect.
Liberals who condemned Thompson's killing did not fare much better. While the media and political elite were generally united in their outrage that Manggione, with his conventionally attractive appearance and prestigious educational pedigree, had been idealized, the online masses saw things differently. Merchandise featuring the image of the video game character Luigi is selling massively on Amazon, and some have been buying Manggione candles.
The message is clear enough: if there is going to be a new idol, someone to form a parasocial bond with, it won't be another singer, dancer or neo-Kardashian. Young people, at least, increasingly think so. They can't be ordered to stop their Luigi mimes as anger at the institutions continues to grow. Even Trump, the great disruptor, will not be immune to this dynamic when he is president again.
Over the next decade, the great conflicts may not be between left and right, but between insider and outsider—those who openly despise existing institutions and those who seek a new order. Magnone worship is not so much about Magnone himself as it is an indication of the direction we are going. The wrath will not abate.
The text is taken from "The Guardian"
Translation: NB
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