While thinking about my last post, I wondered if I wasn’t being a bit hypocritical about being a celebrity. After all, here I am posting about myself on a blog that, currently at least, is open to the public and that I hope to reach at least a few people with. Who am I to point a finger at people playing to their “adoring public”? It made me focus in on what bothers me about the issue and it’s much more the fan issue I don’t understand, not the wanting to be a celebrity issue.
Most of us want to be “known” in some way. We want to feel that our existence matters to a least a few people. I originally started this blog so that friends and family could see what was going on in my mom’s and my life and decided to make it a catch-all for whatever ideas and thoughts came my way. Would I like it if more people read and enjoyed it? Sure, but I’m not planning on doing anything to try to make myself an internet sensation.
It’s the “fan” side of the equation that I don’t understand. Why does a person’s talent in one area lead to them being idolized? Why would the fact I enjoy someone’s singing mean I want to know what they have for breakfast?
This was really brought home to me yesterday while reading my local paper. It announced that an auction was going to be held to sell a gold crown taken from the mouth of Elvis Presley when he was having some dental work done. I believe the bidding was expected to start at $2500.
What, for goodness sake, would anyone do with a thing like this? Mount it on a pedestal in the living room for all to see? It would certainly have to come with a plaque to explain why such an object was being displayed. Keep it lovingly wrapped in silk in a drawer to be taken out and admired every once in a while?
When my dad was cremated the funeral director asked mom if she wanted the steel rods from his forearm or his plastic knee replacement. “No thank you”, she said and I can’t imagine any other answer. It’s not like having the finger bones of some saint around that have supposedly magic powers. Or maybe that is what some fans feel having the gold crown would be like.
Years ago I read a number of interesting studies and experiments about “contagion bias”. Here’s a quick intro to the idea from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057740816300791:
One explanation is that consumers believe that some part of the celebrity, such as their soul or essence, has been imbued into the objects they have used (Newman, Diesendruck, & Bloom, 2011). Much of this has to do with the law of contagion.
The law of contagion explains why people tend to value objects that admired celebrities have come into physical contact with more so than objects that they have owned but never touched (Newman & Bloom, 2014). In particular, it has been theorized that people behave as though the essence of an object’s previous owner is inherent in the object itself (Gelman, 2003, Newman et al., 2011). This is consistent with the finding that people are willing to pay more for George Clooney’s sweater as long as it has not since been dry-cleaned (Newman et al., 2011). It is as if the “Clooney Cooties,” as Bloom (2011) put it, could be sterilized away. Critically, this was not the only finding of note from Newman et al. (2011). A lesser discussed observation was that people were also willing to pay less for George Clooney’s sweater if they were forbidden from telling anyone that Clooney had previously worn it (Bloom, 2011). This highlights how the law of contagion may play a role in conspicuous consumption.
I guess you can’t get an object that has much more “physical contact” than a dental crown!
BTW, the most famous example of contagion bias that I know of is the experiment called “Hitler’s sweater”; you can find an explanation here: https://thinksucceedbehappy.wordpress.com/2020/08/23/would-you-wear-hitlers-sweater/
At any rate, if you enjoy my blog, I’m happy, but please don’t plan on bidding for the titanium screws from my foot when I’m gone!
Tuples and Attributes 