Within the last few months, I have become enthralled with an internet celebrity. This person has 16 million subscribers on YouTube, has a radio show and hosts a weekly podcast with their significant other. I have nothing but respect for this person, and I love the content they produce weekly. However, something quite alarming has happened recently with this person. On the podcast for the week, this person decided to have a celebrity guest. Now, this is not unusual.

In the past, these two people have had guests before, and I have been very happy with those podcasts, a few of them being the ones that I love most. However, when I heard what celebrity they had decided to have on this week, I was pretty upset. See, the person that was chosen as the guest for the week has been classified as a bully and overall just not a good person in terms of their character. Long story short, the two people running the podcast defended their guest and said that everyone was wrong about this person and who they were. However, the negative comments about these two people defending this bully of a person kept pouring in. But they still continued to defend this person. Because of this, I became hurt and disappointed in these people. How could two people who appeared to be so nice and caring support someone who appeared to be mean and also a bully? I started to become more and more upset with this person who I did not even know. Then, it hit me. Why was I so upset with this person and their significant other whom I did not even know? Why was I so upset with the actions of someone who is famous?

I started to really question my values and what I thought about life because of how upset I became at this person. However, after much consideration, I came to the startling conclusion about society: we, as a society, hold celebrities and famous people to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. In our minds, celebrities can do no wrong and are essentially perfect people. This conclusion is reached because of the access we have to these celebrities; from their Facebooks, Instagrams, Snapchat stories and Twitters, we have unlimited access to what these celebrities are doing at all times during all hours of the day. This leads to celebrities only sharing pictures of themselves they like, their best selves. Obviously, the general public does this as well, but it is easier to see the flaws in our own friend's lives because we actually know who they are; we can see what happens before and after the picture they just Instagrammed. However, we do not get that with celebrities; we only see the picture or post and that's it. This leads to the rich and famous being looked at as perfect, infallible, and overall good people.

However, at the end of the day, celebrities are people; they make mistakes and make choices we may or may not agree with. Celebrities should not be held to unattainable standards of character just because they are famous and have a lot of influence in today's culture. At the end of the day, looking up to anybody, regardless of if they are famous or not, is a dangerous game to play. Eventually, the person that you look up to the most will let you down because it's human nature. Ultimately, by putting a celebrity on a pedestal, one will have no choice but to one day take them down from that parapet.