Beth Cooper Howell outlines why it is important not to get caught in the grip of hero worship.
American comic book writer Stan Lee died recently, and all hell broke loose on social media. His passing signalled the end of an era, it’s true, but his work lives on.
It’s also true that many of the millions of people who likely mourned him hadn’t given him much thought while he was alive.
They enjoyed his comic books, which was his point, I think. Watching the drama unfold as people paid their online respects reminded me of fandom, and how it’s changed, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and everything virtual in between.
When I was eight years old, I fell in love with Sylvester Stallone. My “Sly”, as I called him, was the boxer chappie in the “Rocky” film series and he was the ultimate, sexy Eye of the Tiger.
So, as little people do, I wrote to him and proposed marriage, fully believing that he would write back.
The cult of celebrity – or schlebrity – has probably been around since Neanderthal Bob took a stone to a stone and turned it into a hairbrush, immortalising himself in the memories of cave girls everywhere.
But that was then and now, it seems that schlebdom has pushed too far – and we’re high on Hollywood, much to the detriment of credit cards and balanced emotions.
When songstress Amy Winehouse died, there was genuine grief over her untimely passing but just too much personalised angst among strangers who knew only her music.
The issue, as I see it, is that we’re all completely over-informed.
At a click, I can find out what Posh Spice ate for breakfast last Tuesday, the length of her last labour and how she and Becks manage the school run.
All this would be a bit of harmless fun, really, if it didn’t take over our lives. But it does.
Every time I cook pasta, I speak in a Gordon Ramsay voice (“Ragu with chilli sauce – DONE. Rocket reduced in red wine vinegar – DONE”) and then swear at the cat, because Gordon swears at his staff and I don’t have any.
I also continue my unhealthy, obsessive relationship with chocolate, because Nigella looks so damn sexy when she bakes brownies that it can’t be all that bad, can it?
Thanks to the technological might of the 21st century, I cannot escape these people. And they can’t escape me.
How to stop? You can, says my friend Podge. Everybody suddenly becomes fabulously equal when you imagine them sitting on the loo. And there. Now you’re infected by the image too.