The Gossip Machine, Churning Out Cash

I just found a great article from the New York Post that shows how “Celebrity Gossip” has developed into a new form of business for celebrities and gossip sites such as TMZ or Radar. Every little bit of the celebrities private lifes is exploited by the media and millions of people can’t get enough of the juicy details of Schwarzenegger’s affair, Charlie Sheen’s latest outburst or the juicy details of Robert Pattinson’s relationship with Kristen Stewart. The public life is forced onto them as soon as they’ve entered the entertainment business, and either they try to resist by avoiding known celebrity hot spots and leading a quiet life behind closed doors, or they try to use the cameras following their every move to boost their fame.
This is often a dirty game as the gossip sites have proved their unscrupulous work ethic in the past, e.g. when they’ve obtained pictures of Rihanna after she was beaten up by her then-boyfriend Chris Brown, or when they’ve bought the medical records of Britney Spears after her hospitalization in Cedar’s-Sinai Medical Center in 2008, not forgetting the death of Lady Diana in a car accident after she was chased by a horde of paparazzi.

When I’ve started this blog last year, I had to think about the content I wanted to post here and even though I’ve decided to be undecided concerning the subjects of my blog posts, I had and still have a huge “No-Gossip-Rule” and I’ve also stopped visiting web sites like perezhilton.com, tmz.com, radaronline.com, etc. – and I must say that I’m quite alright without knowing whom Paris Hilton is dating or who has entered rehab the third time. What do you think about celebrity gossip sites? Do you read the news? Do you understand the hype? Did you like the NY Post’s article?

Even though it’s a bit old, this short movie by Mike Shinoda for his art show “Glorious Excess (Dies)” in 2009 really fits this topic. Watch him trying to find the reasons for the celebrity gossip addiction: