ISTR that sometime in the late 90s/early 2000s, there was a sort of wealthy young socialite crowd that some actual celebrities hung out with, and this crowd included among others, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.
Once the media got wind of them, they were like the perfect tabloid fodder- pretty, wealthy, somewhat out of control, and without any actual careers, jobs or anything to compete with the tabloids’ attention as far as fame is concerned.
I suspect those two ended up where they are, because in the very early stages, being the heiress to the Hilton hotel empire and being the daughter of OJ Simpson’s late defense attorney and step-child of Bruce Jenner were more interesting than just being some garden-variety rich girls.
So are there equivalents elsewhere? Seems to me that there’s got to be some daughter of a rich noble family somewhere who’s famous for her antics, and because she’s part of that family, but not much else.
For a lot of these ladies, “famous for being famous” is a euphemism for “famous for success in a profession not usually mentioned in a family newspaper”, especially at the highest (kept woman) levels.
One of the twists in this is that when it comes to “celebrity for doing nothing worth celebrating”, places like Europe have an entire class of the population entirely committed to that role: Royalty and Old Aristocracy. Not quite exactly being famous for “nothing”, it’s famous for being born into the mostly useless later generations of families in which the elders at some point did have recognizable achievements. In which case in the USA the likes of the Kardashians could be said to fit that mold, where dad made it big and the brood, raised near the cameras, simply ran with the ball afterwards.
You’re probably right, but the BBC had “Castaway” before that, which had a more BBC-style public interest aspect - put a bunch of people together on an island to film themselves trying to build a community (not lock them away under outside observation to do daft or humiliating “challenges” and generally make themselves notable by being obnoxious). Ben Fogle’s TV career has been built on that.
the problem is that we’ve decided that a person’s worth is measured by how much attention one can get, and we’ve created an environment to feed that with absolute garbage like Survivor, American Idol, and reams of other bullshit. But I’d say this disgusting nonsense is a Western phenomenon, not necessarily an American one.
Right, so what’s the discernible talent in once having dated the cousin of the sister-in-law of the hairdresser of someone who was in BB3? There’s people who make a living out of that.
As Sr Siete said, most of the people in the Spanish glossies make Isabel Preysler look like the height of talent, and while I’m sure she has a lot of it it’s in the trade of “making important men feel important”.
JRDelirious, Hola is among the classy ones… imagine what the bottom of the heap is like :smack:
You can’t really exclude it IMO. Scuttlebutt about the comings and goings of the titled and landed and those around them seems to be the direct ancestor of this phenom.
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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.”
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How quaint that you both talk of her book in the singular when there are now literally dozens of them. Even if you discount the ones for children, she has ‘written’ seven novels and seven autobiographies. Which admittedly is not much of a feat, at least in any traditional sense, when she’s not the one who is doing any of the writing.
Jade Goody does count as AAA famous in that, in the UK at least, everyone knew who she was. We also have minor aristos who are famous for being rich - aristocracy is not royalty - and lots of reality shows where, if you were a contestant on a quiz show, they’re well-known enough that you might face a quiz that included “Joey Essex” as an answer. Essex is part of the name of his TV show, The Only Way is Essex, but he appears as a talking head on other shows listed as Joey Essex, giving his opinions as a famous person who can talk on camera.
Castaway was in the same year as the first UK Big Brother, but it really doesn’t count as a reality show - the participants really did live difficult lives on a remote island, building their own homes, harvesting peat, etc, with little kids and old people and everything, for a full year. Ben Fogle getting a TV career is only partly based on the way he acted there - he was, anyone could admit, a good member of this real community. Prior to going on Castaway he worked at a major magazine and is a right posh bod, not like the other Castaways.
Paris Hilton had a successful tv show. As do the Kardashian clan. Not sure they count for being “famous for being famous”. Otherwise most TV types would be included.
Both of those stemmed from being famous already, and famous for being the spotlight-hunting descendants of people who became famous for other reasons. I don’t think there’s many people who’d consider Hulk Hogan “a famous actor” or “a TV celebrity”, even though his wrestling career evidently took place on TV and he’s also ad a reality show.
It’s still a reality TV show, and he arguably wouldn’t have been famous without it.
It’s irrelevant whether it was a good reality TV show and that he was a nice guy / organizer on it.
That said, I think he is a good presenter, so he’s not FfbF at this point.
There’s people who make a living out of that.