It may have always been entertaining – especially if you’re super bored with your own life – to watch other people being famous just for being famous – and also, shilling lots of products in the process.
And that particular skill with no particular skill behind it – can now be “taught” to kids across the US – for a modest price of up to $1,000 per week.
Nevertheless: however entertained you may be by this profitable, faux fun and reality – would you actually want to live that highly demanding yet vapid lifestyle of a new “socialite” or “reality” star – nowadays known as “YouTuber” or “influencer” – right there on the internet?
Well, you may not be – if you are an adult fully aware of the consequences, and put off by all the shortcomings. But what if you had somebody else to push onto that stage, for the sake of all that monetary gain – like, say, your own child?
One would think the answer would be a resounding “no” – but that’s not what the The Wall Street Journal is reporting.
And, apparently – it’s not even the moral conundrum of putting the kids to work at an early age before the whole world – it’s about having enough money to send them to a new crop of summer camps that will teach them how to crate “branded social media-related content.”
Granted, showbiz has always been showbiz, and kids have always had their place in it, largely driven by their fame and money-hungry parents. Decades later, the rest of the world sometimes gets to read their gut-wrenching biographies detailing unhappiness and exploitation.
In other words, there will always be people willing and prepared to sacrifice everything they have, and quite a few things they really don’t – just to be famous, let alone earn a lot of money.
But now, the new brand of extreme greed and exhibitionism caters to anyone with an internet connection – well beyond anything traditional media like TV, or traditional “star-makers” like Hollywood could ever have promised, or threatened.
Here’s hoping this latest trend somehow ends up more positive in the long run. Not least because it apparently requires up to “$1,000 per week in summer camp money” to master it.
