Celebrity news often sneaks up on me. I’m scrolling through Instagram or Twitter and I see a joke about a famous name, don’t think much about it, and then I see another one with the same punch line. At this point I know something happened. If I’m interested I’ll google it. I often don’t. Sometimes, however, the news is inescapable. I found out about Adam Levine’s alleged infidelity this way: by seeing countless memes of the screenshots shared from his alleged messages with Sumner Stroh. The same applies to allegations against Ned Fulmer of the YouTube group “The Try Guys” and his alleged affair. The celebrity gossip mill is probably always going to be spinning, so in a way I’m not surprised that these stories have garnered attention.
But if we take a step back, there’s something surreal about our fixation on celebrity relationships — the trick and the treat — that almost seems malicious. Why do we care so much about who has sex with whom? And is it okay to downplay it, especially when it could lead to personal harm or the breakup of a marriage?
Let’s start with why people care. There has always been an appetite for celebrity news, often presented in a succinct or sensational way. Tabloid journalism dates back to the early 20th century, when the term tabloid meant something like tablet; Messages delivered in a concise, bite-sized format. In 1903 Alfred Harmsworth founded The Daily Mirror, which filled its pages with tabloid news that appealed to the masses: stories about sports, crime, human interest, and celebrity. This proved incredibly popular, selling a million copies a day within 6 years of its launch.
I can think of three reasons why people invest in celebrity lives. First, humans are social and empathetic; We make connections with people we see often. We enter into parasocial relationships—one-way relationships with public figures—when we relate to a celebrity, when they inspire us, or when we’re invested in their career because we like what they produce. This is not good or bad per se; Fandoms can create a sense of belonging and foster mutual relationships with other fans, or they can be obsessive and condone a sense of entitlement to celebrity privacy. We like hearing from celebrities because we feel like we know them to some degree. Hearing about something Adam Levine has done is like hearing about something an old classmate did, only everyone knows it.
Second, even if you’re not interested in parasocial relationships, celebrities are. Their brand is their personality and they want brand loyalty. We see this when actors go on press tours for films, when artists go live on Instagram, and most obviously when YouTubers and influencers build a relationship with fans by nurturing a relatable and approachable persona. Celebrities want you to take care of them – this is how they get their money.
After all, celebrity news is just a little bit of fun. It’s not as heavy or upsetting as news of conflict, not as inaccessible as something like economics, and not as background-heavy as politics. It’s captivating without being exhausting; a form of escapism
All of those things are true when it comes to relationship drama, but there’s another facet of celebrity news that’s specific to situations like Levine and Fulmer’s. Although much of celebrity remains inaccessible and unimaginable to the average person — I have no idea what it would be like to fly a private jet, attend lavish parties, or go on an international tour — human relationships are inherently relatable. We see celebrity relationships and we can understand them. We call people like Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas #goals because they seem like the idyll of married life. We play Lemonade at full volume and sing along with Beyoncé because we know how painful it is to be cheated on. I don’t know what it takes to negotiate a movie deal, but I know what it feels like to be in love. This makes celebrities more human and also gives us reason to judge them. Going through a divorce is painful, and experiencing a celebrity makes us sympathetic. Cheating is terrible, and a celebrity who does it gives the world an opportunity to judge them. After all, if their persona is a brand, consumers have the right to boycott or support them as they see fit.
Or is it? After all, celebrities aren’t just brands. they are human While we can to some extent separate their creations, image, and personality from who they are as human beings, their relationships — including romantic relationships — are arguably inseparable from their error-prone, vulnerable human core. I don’t mean that we should have more empathy for unfaithful celebrities; Being mistake-prone doesn’t absolve you from wrongdoing, especially when those mistakes have painful consequences for those you love.
If Levine had an affair with Stroh, people are allowed to criticize him for it. Maybe that’s why they’re even allowed to make fun of him. My empathy is with his wife instead. He and Behati Prinsloo have been married for just under a decade; they have two children together. To them, he’s not just a persona, a voice in a song, a low-res screenshot of a pathetic flirt. He is someone destined to stay with her in sickness and in health. Who swore to love her and only her.
Infidelity is a terrible thing for anyone, let alone someone the world is watching. Whatever process she goes through next – grief, forgiveness or healing – is scrutinized by a horde of strangers who see her as a character; or worse, an addendum to her husband’s brand. The same reason people find solace in the proximity of celebrities underpins why it’s important to keep your distance: empathy.
Parasocial relationships, I would say, are not as one-sided as we think. A celebrity may not know you exist as an individual and may not hold you in the same regard as they do, but the forces that go into, scrutinize, and joke about their lives are fueled by you. That’s not always bad. When people can boycott and criticize celebrities and creators, we can hold some of the most powerful and otherwise untouchable people in our society to account. But it also means that harrowing and even traumatic events for celebrities are amplified by the extent to which their trauma is publicly shared. Notice how TMZ’s Vanessa Bryant found out about the deaths of her husband and child, how Taylor Swift was scolded for having multiple ex-boyfriends, how Ariana Grande was blamed for the death by a terrorist attack at her concert in Manchester. That’s not to say that what Prinsloo or Ariel Fulmer are going through is necessarily more painful than any other person whose spouse has been unfaithful, but it does take place in a unique context that comes with unique pressures.
Does that mean we can’t laugh at Adam Levine’s bad flirting? I’m not sure. The most moral way, in my opinion, is simply to do what Prinsloo and Ariel Fulmer ask. Give them space if they want. Mourn with them if they want. Support them when they want to express their pain through art like Lemonade. Joke if you will, but realize that the longer the issue stays in the public eye, especially if it stays uncritical, the longer the victims who are at the heart of these stories will have to suffer.
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