Let’s try wording it a different way: Jobs that demand you be aggressive, bolshy and arrogant tend to lead to a certain mindset.

I’d say that also includes people in the military, but I’m a bit worried that you know a bone-marrow-donating sniper that will cause you to lose all objectivity again.

etc.

Granted, most people don’t agree with me, but it sparked an interesting discussion.

For incredibly low values of “interesting”.

I’m just sayin’ that the THINK OF THE CELEBRITIES sentiment that comes out in these threads is ridiculous.

I’m not seeing any of that at all.  I’m seeing a lot of “paparazzos are assholes” but not any of what you’re talking about.  Kinda seems more like you wanted to rant about something.

If I was him I would have looked Oprah right in the eyes and been like, “You’re telling me you’ve never taken a dishonest action or told a lie to get where you are?” 

I probably would have done the same thing.  Yeah, dishonest, but if I put in the effort to write a novel and could only get it published if I lied and called it a “memoir” I’d be pretty tempted.

And, yes, I know perfectly well what the word means: Don’t you want us to be sympathetic to your point of view? It’s not working.

No, sympathy wasn’t what I was looking for. That word doesn’t mean what you think it means either.

There is having an opinion and caring about something, and there is going off on a tirade no one cares about. It’s not fun in real life, and it’s not fun on the internet, either.

The couple dozen replies seem to disagree with argument that no one finds the discussion worth engaging in. Granted, most people don’t agree with me, but it sparked an interesting discussion. You do know that you can just skip threads you don’t care about, right?

Also, it’s somewhat amusing that you’re oh-so-concerned with how people pay attention so much to celebrities, and yet you’ve just spent a lot of time going on and on about celebrities.

I bet you would find it “ironic” if someone who isn’t a materialist talked about the ill effects of materialism too. Buddhist are “ironic”. lolz.

And you’re still not doing yourself any favors.

Thanks for the heads up man. I really appreciate and value your advice.

I think it’s more about seeing who these privacy violators are, what type of people this job attracts, and what the job does to such people.  They had nothing to lose by simply giving their first names to JGL, but all they can think to do when their privacy is even slightly threatened, is use “Asshole” as their pseudonyms.  They knew, that by their prior acts they were being hostile, so they instinctively could only be hostile to his first overtures. It’s a pretty shitty business.

It’s definitely amusing – at the very least – to talk about the Trix rabbit as a byproduct of malaria, or some such. But it has its limits. About fifteen seconds into a conversation about evo psych, someone is invariably going to ask you to reconcile homosexuality, suicide, abstinence, interracial marriage….

You can see how it can go from ‘cheeky, know-it-all thought experiment’ to ‘the reason you have no friends’ in short order.

‘Along these general themes, The Century of the Self  asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy, commodification and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitudes to fashion and superficiality.’  -Wiki

Since seeing this series, I’ve become unable to view most tools used to sell us products (including celebrity) as anything but an appeal to our hindbrains.  Either Madison Ave. is trying to sell us something, or collecting data to develope better methods for selling to us in the future.  They’ll use whatever it takes to get some kind of quantifiable response.  The paps serve that purpose; it’s why there is no such thing as ‘bad’ publicity… now more than ever.