During Taylor Swift’s recent The Eras Tour in Munich, over 40,000 fans stood outside the venue — not to mention more than 100,000 people watching live streams of the show.
This obsession with another person isn’t unique to Taylor Swift. Whether it’s a musician, actor, or influencer, people love obsessing over other people.
Obsession is scientifically classified as recurrent intrusive ideas, thoughts, and/or impulses that are distressing and can cause people to have difficulty resisting said thoughts.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Mehezabin Dordi presents the idea that people have a natural tendency to compare themselves to other people. Celebrities represent what people wish they could acquire themselves, Dordi argues, which is beauty, success, and wealth.
One of the earliest examples of celebrity infatuation involved French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who performed in the late 1800s. With her unique voice and expressive gestures, she became popular and admired. People loved her.
A better known example of celebrity obsession involved Elvis Presley. When Elvis skyrocketed to popularity, female fans went crazy for his dance moves and looks. Even now, you can find people who still are obsessing over him, with posters on their walls, vinyls, really any type of merchandise created. After Elvis came the Beatles and so on. Remember the fan hysteria surrounding One Direction and other boy bands?
According to studies from the National Institute of Health, high levels of celebrity worship and obsession are associated with problematic use of the internet and social media, maladaptive daydreaming, and a desire for fame. Additionally, The NIH explains that females are more likely than males to reach an extreme level of obsession with celebrities.
People use celebrities as an escape from reality. They live vicariously through them. Celebrities represent something the average person cannot receive. According to statistics from WIRED, only around 1 in 10,000 people actually achieve fame status. These famous people resemble a special type of beauty and accomplishment that nearly all humans desire.
Take the Kardashians, for example. During a 2011 interview, American broadcaster and journalist Barbara Walters told the Kardashian sisters and Kris Jenner, “You don’t really act, you don’t sing, you don’t dance. You don’t have any, forgive me, any talent.” If fame and fortune can come to them, we tell ourselves, the average person can also hope to rise to fame.
But there’s the side of wanting to be a celebrity, and there’s then the side of wanting to be with a celebrity.
Fantasizing about being with a celebrity who is seen as perfect is just so much less work than being and committing in a real-life relationship. Celebrities’ flaws aren’t shown to people. They can easily be irritable or difficult to deal with, but those flaws are usually not known, because they’re not meant to be. Flawlessness is the main appeal.
All of which leads us to today. One of the most intense cases of celebrity obsession concerns Taylor Swift. Fans gather outside her home, recording studio, and basically anywhere she goes. Thousands stand outside the stadium of her concerts to listen and possibly catch a glimpse of the screen. They try to sneak into her concerts, bribing guards to get in.
For the past few decades, parasocial relationships with celebrities have become normalized by society. People love to obsess over media personalities, creating fictitious pipelines that cater towards their specific needs and ideals. Obsession comes from a place of longing, a desire to achieve a certain level of flawlessness these celebrities appear to contain.
