Celebrities – we all love them! My best friend from childhood became an overnight success story when he was featured on some Forbes list, and I was awed by it! But having known him so closely, I can relate to what Daniel J. Boorstin mentions in his book ‘The Image’:
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness. His qualities – or rather his lack of qualities – illustrate our peculiar problems. He is neither good nor bad, great nor petty. He is the human pseudo-event. He has been fabricated on purpose to satisfy our exaggerated expectations of human greatness. He is morally neutral. The product of no conspiracy, of no group promoting vice or emptiness, he is made by honest, industrious men of high professional ethics doing their job, “informing” and educating us.
This idea is just so accurate. Celebrities are human beings in the end. They are like you and me. But what makes them special is their skill sets and ability to get outcomes, in my opinion. Celebrities are people whom we never know closely, just the parts that they show us or narratives they feed our hungry minds through social media.
Does this mean one should look for celebrity status or not? In my opinion, when you’re a successful leader, celebrity status is just an outcome of the entire journey. Instead its a spillover of all the greatness that you have tried to build over the years. Being a celebrity helps one influence the minds of people easily, and therefore, even if its a spillover it is an integral part of being a successful leader – claiming your leadership spot and so also maintaining it.