Hero worship. It has probably always been a thing and is also not likely to die out any time soon. Picking someone to excessively admire to the point where they can do no wrong seems to be second nature to humans since we can’t always seem to help it. Sometimes, it just happens.
There are definitely pros and cons to hero worship, especially extreme hero worship. Anything can be rather unhealthy in extreme quantities and hero worship is no exception to the rule.
Everyone has heroes; someone that they can look up to or someone similar to what they aspire to be. There’s nothing bad about having heroes. In fact, it's rather helpful in getting through life when you do have heroes. It just becomes a problem when having that hero consumes everything in your life and that person gets put up onto a pedestal that they didn’t even ask for. Hero worship can completely consume and possibly destroy someone’s life if they aren't careful.
When someone is consumed by hero worshiping, it can completely alter that person’s life. They can become blind to any faults that their hero might have and can lack individuality because they’re trying so hard to be like their hero.
Fangirls/boys are a good example of hero worship. They worship their bands or actors/actresses and see them doing no wrong. Obviously not all of them are like that, but many are. And a lot of fangirls, like Beliebers, are young, around 14 years old. That's a pretty impressionable age, a time when you're still trying to figure things out in life. Adding a celebrity to the mix just makes it more complicated, especially when you worship the ground that they walk on and threaten people who don't view them the same way that you do.
A Pentatonix fan group that I’m a part of on Facebook is filled to the brim with teenaged hero worshipers. They see the music group as their idols and believe that they can do absolutely nothing wrong. Their entire lives seem to revolve around them and it feels like there's nothing else to their personality. The five people in Pentatonix can do absolutely nothing wrong according to them. That’s a pretty good example of hero worship.
It is possible to have a hero and not worship them like they’re a god. Sometimes we have heroes because they have a quality that we ourselves desire to have. And that’s okay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a hero. Almost everyone has heroes. But it’s not necessary to worship the ground they walk on. That should be reserved for dogs, who actually deserve it.
