Do others countries have the equivalent of the Kardashians? Are we the only country that makes celebrities out of people for no apparent reason? I am not counting other country’s royal families in this.
French intellectuals? 
You mean the phenomenon where someone gets interviewed in the glossies because in 10th grade she went out with the cousin of the sister-in-law of the hairdresser of someone who was in Big Brother 3? You know, the ones who make people who make a living by selling interviews to the same mags, on account on being the direct descendant of a famous artist, look like actual celebs?
Yep. Got those. They seem to be in pretty much every country that’s got celebrity rags.
Nope. There are people in the UK who try to do this too. There’s been a whole series of “manufactured reality” series based on gormless people in various parts of the country generally misbehaving for attention (“Desperate Scousewives”, anyone?). The “brand leader” in creating a brand out of next to nothing (or with next to nothing on) is Katie Price, who started marketing herself as a topless model with unfeasibly enhanced breasts (since reduced), then built a whole living out of getting TV series filmed of her supposed homelife, published a novel over her own name, launched own brand merchandise, and even had a disastrous attempt to become the UK’s representative in the Eurovision Song Contest. All kept bubbling by social media feuds with sundry others.
In her wake are the bargain basement imitators like Josie Cunningham (known to the tabloids as the “NHS boob job scrounger” (don’t ask).
Not exactly.
OP is talking about people who are AAA-list famous, despite a conspicuous lack of any discernible talent.
Many, many years ago, there used to be a category of young women rarely out of the newspapers (in those days) called “starlets”. Few if any ever actually appeared on stage or in movies, they mostly seemed to turn up to be photographed looking glamorous at premieres. I can remember one of whom it was said she would turn up at the opening of an envelope.
nm
I got her muddled with Josie Long in my mind for a few very confusing seconds there! 
Agree with all this, and for the most part think it’s a good example.
But…
whenever there’s a discussion like this, you get into the grey area of modeling.
I think modeling, even glamour modeling is a “real” job, and Katie Price got famous for being very attractive to lots of men (not me). I would personally draw a line between that and famous-for-being-famous; although her career after page 3 has been just that.
I loved the anecdote about Katie Price’s book, which was ghostwritten, that she would meet up with the ghostwritters and “Kate re-sits down with it and says, I want it to be this or that, or more powerful, and they just write it into book words.”
If anything, it is a social phenomenon more closely allied with modernity. As is – totally different but first noticed as operating in the American culture – Warhol’s dictum that everyone will be/can be famous for 15 minutes.
Not for the first time though – given OP’s premise, which may also be true – I’m thinking of previously unthinkable social relationships from the 1920s in America, a nation (I think akin only to Japan and Israel in this) where “modern” is adopted or encouraged almost as part of national culture, which then spreads. (Are there tribes in Asia or Africa where people are famous for being famous?)
Now, industrialization of course of engendered novel previously unthinkable social phenomena, and then England was chronologically ahead of the pack.
It may have begun in England, in the late 18th century.
The Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Cavendish, began a hat craze that continued for decades. She even made it into a Sherlock Holmes story.
Famous for being famous, indeed.
I’m from Spain. We almost literally only have those.
The UK had Jade Goody, who was famous despite for of having no talent at all, only for being a total bitch on Big Brother.
Of course, we even have the OG FfbF - the Mona Lisa. A rather pedestrian Renaissance portrait that somehow became the one painting known to every single person on Earth.
For a more straight example, France has Loana- famous for having starred in the first season of French Big Brother and fucking someone in the pool there. For a time she was then invited on every TV show and has been doing the Famous Nobody thing, which is launching clothing and perfume lines. Also publishing ghost-written biographies presumably containing the literary approximation of outer-space void.
Not exactly the same thing (being famous for who you’re sleeping with) but Emperor Hadrian’s lover Antonius is the classic (literally) example of the this.
I always find it quite amusing (and quite telling of the hypocrisy of western society as whole) that Roman culture stressed above all else the idea that to be a famous respected individual you needed to achieve great things in politics or war. Yet one of the most the famous, remembered individuals of Roman period (I have not seen a decent sized collection of roman statues anywhere in the world without at least one statue of Antonius) did nothing except sleep with an emperor.
In the UK in the 1990s, we had a rash of ‘it girls’ who were at the time, identified as being famous for being famous - the only one I remember was Tara Palmer Tomkinson
Most of the current crop of famous for being famous are mostly from reality tv. Many of the specific shows have been recycled from shows started in Europe. There is so much back and forth between franchises it’s hard to remember which shows started where. So, no it is happening everywhere there is a TV network.
Though there are reality shows pre-dating it. I am pretty sure the current rash of such stars is was started by Big Brother. It was originally a Dutch show, and covered in the UK as a “look what these crazy foreigners are doing” story (as such things tend to be in certain sections of the media in the UK). In no time at all the show had taken over in the UK and a monster was born. TV networks everywhere realized they didn’t need to pay for actual writers and actors.