Welcome back, Hershal. First thing’s first, the word ‘abscond’. I have to be honest, I couldn’t understand what you meant by ‘absconding meaningful conclusions,’ so I had to look it up. This is what Mr. Webster tells me (the definition I assume is the most pertinent):

Abscond
\ab-ˈskänd, əb-\
to go away and take something that does not belong to you


Hm, well then. Are you implying you are an essayist hustler, stealing meaningful conclusions from us sucker NFC homies? Are you holding your verbal ‘gat’ to our metaphorical temple, yelling ‘you see this insightful shit? that’s mine, motherfuckers!’? Watch yourself- I’m about to spit fire onto your trite musings.

You’re right to be conflicted about fame. I think our society is conflicted about fame. The famous-yet-talentless artist is so much of cliche nowadays that I sometimes find myself surprised that anybody I have heard of has any real talent at all. It’s all autotune, TMZ, and good looks, right? Try this: go to an indie concert, or to some dive bar in the middle of yet-to-be-gentrified side street, or watch a youtube video of a cover artist with less than 1000 views. If the music sounds good, what does everyone say? ‘Wow, I can’t believe they’re not famous?!’

So which is it? Are famous people talentless-egomaniacs, or do we live in a meritocracy that promotes the talented to the top? My b-word-senses are tingling. Obviously fame comes from some concoction of luck, talent and determination. It seems, though, that when people get famous, they stay famous. And that I think is an idea worth talking about. Why do we care about some one-hit-wonder artist from the 90s?

That is where the science of social anthropology is relevant. There are several theories about the evolution of language in humans, and many of them revolve around gossip. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, do not use verbal cues to build one-on-one relationships, but instead engage in ‘social grooming’ where they sit together and literally scratch each other’s back. The language evolution theory hypothesizes that humans developed language by substituting this type of back scratching with verbally communicated gossip about other members of the tribe. The very structure of a sentence nicely follows from a single piece of gossip (the subject, Becky, the adjective clause, with long hair, the verb, stole, the object, my man). Juicy gossip would act as social capital, and those who were in-the-know were powerful members of the group.

A recent study showed that negative gossip about somebody can change the way your brain reacts to seeing their face (surprise, surprise). The reasoning is simple: we evolved to use gossip as a way to tell friend from foe. Information gleaned from gossip is therefore deeply ingrained into the linguistic and visual parts of the brain. We treat gossip about other people as “important,” no matter who they are. It’s just that it’s easier than ever now to communicate gossip across oceans, across racial and ethnic boundaries.

Did you know that the white wedding dress only caught on in the mid 19th century after Queen Victoria wore one? You think the Kardashian’s are good at being famous? Please. The royal family has been trend-setting for millenia.

Even hunter-gatherer societies have celebrities and status hierarchies. We have evolved to continuously obsess over the ‘top’, gossip about them to build relationships, and dream about making it big.

Perhaps the explosion of celebrity-worship in the last 50 years is different. It is easier than ever to substitute in person relationships with just constant second hand information about people you’ve never met. Fans develop ‘parasocial’ relationships with the famous, devouring the minutiae of their life like Remora fish (‘suckerfish’) devour the feces of their host-shark.

It’s gross. But it’s totally natural.