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| Negative | 72% | 732 votes | Total: 1012 votes | |
| Positive | 28% | 280 votes |
Negative
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Add to FavoritesWould we be able to live without celebrities? Yes, but life would be a lot less interesting without them. It isn't exactly a good thing either. For example, how many celebrities break the law and get away with it because they have the money to do so? Or, how many celebrities are there that don't live in the real world while not caring how their desires and actions affect others? The answer would be there's quite a lot. However, not all celebrities have a bad influence on society. It's just that the majority do and unfortunately, this puts celebrities in a bad light.
Breaking laws and getting away with it:
Quite a few celebrities drink and then drive ending up with them getting pulled over. What follows will also be relevant to other laws that are broken.
After breaking the law and spending some time at the local jail, getting a ticket or any number of other actions that can be used to interrogate or punish law breakers, the actual punishment tends to be less worse than it is for normal people. If a celebrity gets off lightly or isn't punished at all for breaking the law, then it doesn't reflect well on the system because normal people wouldn't be so lucky. Thus celebrities use their money, power and connections to their advantage via abusing the system's loopholes. The chances are also rather good that celebrities will break the law again and get away with it completely or only face minor consequences.
In other words, some celebrities either think or are in actual fact above the law.
Celebrities create a scene to get noticed:
It's true. Some of the things you read about them are too bizarre to even contemplate a normal person going through. Without mentioning names, take a look at a pop star or two and ask yourself if what you read about their troubled lifes are staged or not. In fact, the problems you read about might not be staged but if they're not, then it begs the question as to what the state of mind of certain celebrities is actually like. Or rather, what their personality is like and how it would be to live with or know them.
Honestly, some of the people things read about them are just too unbelievable to be true.
They don't care about others:
A lot of celebrities tend to be too embroiled in what they want to care or think about others. Often, they view normal, working class people as below them because they're not rich and because they're not popular. This also ties into the fact that a lot of celebrities think they're the only thing that matters and everyone else exists to serve them.
There are a lot of reports out there of employees for celebrities being mistreated.
A lot of celebrities don't live in the real world:
Ask yourself if many live in the world of regular, working class people. They don't. They don't realise what consequences their desires and actions could have on others. Some celebrities also tend to be rather aloof and detached from the goings on of the world.
For instance, if a celebrity were to name their child a rather silly name, what would happen to the child at school? They'd be bullied for their name and if that wasn't enough, chances are they'd be bullied for having celebrity parents. However, celebrities can't do anything about the last point, but they certainly can do something about what they name their children.
Also, the fact is many don't even think their children could be bullied as a result of what they choose to name them. Celebrities that choose to give daft names to their children perhaps think the world is perfect and no harm will come to their children because of their choices.
Celebrities don't tend to deserve the attention they get:
Instead of people reading and worrying about working class people who are having problems or actually deserve the attention for their accomplishments, people are more worried about what celebrities are doing. Instead of reading about the latest break-ups amongst celebrity couples or the latest haircut they get, we should be hearing about that normal guy or woman who just saved someone. Or we should be hearing about the extraordinary people who continue to live under poverty and in war zones.
Summary:
Celebr ities that keep themselves to themselves and live normally while being grounded in the real world deserve a lot of respect. By watching shows like Long Way Round, it certainly shows that not all celebrities are a negative influence on society. Ewan McGregor definitely seemed like a down to earth guy during the show's duration and in fact a very likeable one. In fact, he doesn't seem to be the sort that craves attention either and certainly doesn't look down upon others.
It's a pity more celebrities aren't like him and others.
Learn more about this author, Dan Cartwright.
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Positive
Whether or not celebrities have a positive or negative effect is difficult to answer with a 'yes' or a 'no'. All celebrities are all famous but that is where the similarity ends. We have young ones, old ones, nasty ones and good ones.
We have celebrities who break the law, openly taking drugs, getting drunk and violent in public and shop lifting but there again a well behaved, mature teenager would not want to copy them. If anyone goes out behaving in this way they probably would have anyway. We have had much publicised cases such as Michael Jackson being convicted of molesting children and O.J.Simpson found guilty of murder. We did not suddenly have a surge of people molesting children or murdering their wife just because the celebrities did. People did not suddenly decide to follow suit. If they had wanted to behave that way they would have already done so.
For every badly behaved celebrity we have there is another one who is squeeky clean, moral, legal and caring, who donates money to charity and never puts a foot wrong. Celebrities such as Cliff Richard are known for their spiritual and religious beliefs, their gentle nature and their peaceful life. If somebody wants to emulate someone famous they can emulate them as easily as they can the wrong doers. Some teenagers get it into their head that they must be rich and famous like their idol and they move heaven and earth to become a famous pop star, model or actress, but there is no harm in this. It is far better for them to aspire to something legal and moral, where they hope to earn a living, and spend their time on that, than hanging around on street corners wearing hoodies and robbing people with a flick knife wjhile planning to spend the rest of their life living on benefits. At least they have been spurred on to be ambitious and try to achieve something.
We are fascinated by celebrities because they are rich and famous, sometimes we are jealous of them, but it does not follow that we are lemmings who would jump off a cliff because they do. We are not that dumb. We may not be rich or famous but we have a brain. We can work out for ourselves what lifestyle we want. If we are going to follow others we are more likely to emulate our parents, neighbours, brother or sister, people we are in proper contact with and whose opinion matters to us.
Learn more about this author, Carmel Brulez.
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