Celebrity culture is omnipresent. Entire social media accounts are dedicated to celebrity rumors and updates. Charli XCX’s “What’s in my bag” and Sydney Sweeney’s “Makeup routine” find their way onto our feeds, and trashy magazines stare us down in the grocery store check-out line.
Obsession with celebrities points to the greater phenomenon of our entertainment-obsessed society, where we clutch onto entertainment as a distraction from our generally mundane day-to-day lives. Celebrity culture thrives because fandoms exist. Fandoms are simply t he fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc.
, that are collectively seen as a community or subculture. Fandoms are both the byproduct and building blocks of pop culture. Entire communities of people come together around their shared appreciation for a certain celebrity, which celebrities rely on to increase their popularity.
Previously, celebrities relied solely on their agencies to craft stories and publicity-stunt relationships to get the cameras flashing and the reporters talking. Now, in the age of social media, celebrities are taking matters into their own hands and using their platforms to craft their own narratives. One way celebrities can solidify fandoms for themselves in our social media-dominated culture is by going public with their romantic relationships.
Timothee Chalamet and Kylie Jenner’s relationship is a recent example that exposes the effectiveness of celebrities letting the public have .