Reality TV, keeping up with the cretins

Kim Kardashian: how did she become such a threat to western civilisation? | Life and style | The Observer
Extracts:
But others point beyond the "media" to the consumers of celebrity culture. "Kim Kardashian is not famous for being famous," said Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at New York state's Syracuse University, who pointed out that "most celebrities get rich because we line their pockets."Now it may be that her skill is one that's harder to identify than a prize-winning scientist, but she's good at what she does: getting people to pay attention to her. People have been complaining about it as long as it's existed – it's an abstraction. I don't think we really want it to go away." Thompson believes if all celebrities disappeared tomorrow, we would clamour for them to be back.
The desire for attention is, however, where the major danger of celebrity culture lies, according to Dr Angie Hobbs, a senior fellow in the public understanding of philosophy at the University of Warwick. She said the human desire for status had been documented as far back as Plato. "But when a society starts divorcing status from doing honourable things and awards it for materialistic things, that's when you are in trouble. You have to look very carefully at why people want to be famous, what they are lacking. And at why people who don't want to be famous themselves want to follow famous people, what they are lacking."