Celebrity Worship and the Internet

I had a fairly uneventful morning with my internship this morning, though it ended up picking up significantly this afternoon, and found myself surfing the internet looking at virtually nothing. This little piece of writing will I think be particularly interesting when compared to The Scholastic Scribe’s blog on Tuesday talking about the reliability of the internet. As I looked through piles and piles of junk on the internet, I realized how much the World Wide Web is focused around famous people and their lives. This became a topic of interest to me when I started to think about all of the false reports relating to Mr. Brett Favre and his recent “coming-out-of-retirement-controversy.”

Just last week, I sat at my computer reading an ESPN blog (somewhat official) talking about Brett Favre news and whether or not he is going to come back/should come back/what would happen if he did come back. Below this were thousands of comments from internet users giving their personal opinions on the matter. Now, I like to read what other people think and I try to give them the benefit of the doubt when they say stupid things, but when people go to a ESPN blog about Brett Favre maybe coming back and turn it into a “Tom Brady VS. Brett Favre Dual: Which QB is Better,” I got a little steamed.

One user decided to equate Brett Favre’s success solely with his fan base and his popularity. I should clear something up, I am a huge Packers fan, and as virtually every fan of the Pack until the recent weeks, Brett Favre is a wonderful wonderful man and has done much to make our team great. A friend of mine even edited his “religious views” on Facebook to read, “Brett Favre’s smile once brought a puppy back to life.” I do understand that Brett Favre is worshiped by his fans, but doesn’t he deserve to be? Is he really comparable to LiLo (I read that as a nickname for Lindsay Lohan and decided it was necessary to use) or BriSpears (I made that one up)? In no way are the fans who think Brett Favre should come back as crazy about him as the rest of the world is about watching 20 year old girls get wasted and make dumb mistakes.

Quick change of pace, my personal opinion is that Brett Favre loves the game of football and realized he made a mistake. Did the Packers screw up with forcing him to make a quick decision? Maybe. Did Brett Favre screw up and communicate poorly with the management and his teammates? Maybe. But now what should they do about it? Let Brett come back and play for the Packers if he wants. Sucks to be Aaron Rodgers, but the two of them should face each other consistently in training camp, and whoever performs better in practice and in pre-season games gets the starting spot. But don’t go with the Bears’ technique of switching your starter every 2 games when they suck, that never worked for anyone; however, splitting time between the two of them when the team has different needs in different situations could be useful and effective.


Back to my fascination with the things that are posted on the internet:

More or less, the internet is just filled with bullshit and it is hilarious. Am I guilty of looking at that crap? Of course. And if you deny it, you are a liar. Everyone has at least some sort of guilty pleasure in finding out about the lives of our favorite actor, musician, athlete, whatever; who hasn’t heard about Brangelina’s twins? So, it sucks that the www is full of lies and nonsense, but as long as you the reader knows that it is a lie and largely embellished (that is the second time I have used that word on this blog, and I like it a lot) and strays greatly from the truth, then so what.

Just a suggestion: If you so choose to write a paper on the life of a celebrity or something for one of your courses, citing http://www.splashnewsonline.com/ would probably be a bad idea.