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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

> “We do it everyday to celebrities. No difference. Outrage culture is so dumb,” wrote one Instagram user below a BuzzFeed News post on the story.

I don't think this commenter understands that celebrities choose to put themselves in the spotlight.

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Fame used to be something you had to ask for, because being famous required access to limited infrastructure. Media access was scarce, and so you had to work to be noticed by the gatekeepers of that infrastructure.

Digital communication an internetworking fundamentally changed that; the cost to publish dropped to approximately zero. Basic media access is de facto no longer scarce. You no longer need to appeal to a gatekeeper when you can e.g. post a tweet for free.

This means it it now possible to accidentally reach a much larger audience than the most of the pre-internet media. Fame is now something that can happen to you. Worse, the traditional idea of fame was something you could walk away form. You simply quit participating; being some type of celebrity was a job that required maintenance. When you become accidentally famous on Twitter/etc it is often your normal life that happened to become famous. Walking away form that means walking away from your normal life.

For a very good explanation of this topic, I recommend this[1] video.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w

Excellent video, thanks. Watch all the way through. It gets even better as it goes.

> celebrities choose to put themselves in the spotlight.

It does not follow that e.g. if your day job is singing or acting, that you want people to interrupt you and take photos when you are eating in a restaurant, or discuss your relationships in a tabloid. Many would view it as an unfortunate side-effect of the job, or worse.

Agreed. However, many musicians are not and they are very influential in that. I remember when Dave Matthews was in his heyday, he says he could mostly just walk down the street like normal but not if he surrounded himself with an entourage and dressed up like a celebrity.

Yep they can often blend right in if they want to. One time my friend was in an ordinary rock club in Seattle standing in a group of people waiting to talk to the (popular-but-not-mega-famous) musicians who had just finished their set. Next to him is an unassuming, nebbishy guy with glasses waiting politely. The musicians eventually make their way to this fan, he starts talking and out comes this deep baritone voice... turns out it's fucking Eddie Vedder.

> Many would view it as an unfortunate side-effect of the job, or worse.

It is somewhat unfortunate, but it's also well-understood, as you start working to get into these spaces you know it's a significant risk especially if you're aiming for the more popular kind of public act[0].

And that's not a recent phenomenon either, public performers have had significantly lowered expectations of privacy… ever since the concept has existed really.

What I mean to say is: if you're an artist, you're aware that this shit is a risk, and you can act to mitigate it, and it's a pain and tiring but at least it's that. And if you know dealing is not an option, you take a different path or take care to hide your identity early on (à la Banksy) or use some other means of separating a public persona and a more discrete private one.

If you're a rando, the expectation is not that you're going to be made "famous" for mundane actions, it's not a side-effect or your career and benefits, and you're basically hosed.

[0] Dave Chambers / Blindboy Boatclub can probably expect less intrusiveness into their private life and actions than Beyonce or Chris Pratt

Do you think that was always the expectation? In a few short years, if the current path continues, we'll have an "expectation" that random people have just as little right to privacy. This seems to fall into the same boat as, if I don't stand up for others (in this case, celebrities, who are still people, no matter how envious we may be of them), then who will stand up for me?

It has been an expectation at least since Mark Twain, who courted and reveled in public attention: https://www.thedailybeast.com/americas-first-modern-celebrit...

But I don't think there's any slippery slope there. People who aggressively court public attention should expect to receive public attention. People who don't generally shouldn't. (The exception for me being people who willfully harm others.)

Mark Twain seems like a different breed; a man who could certainly give as good as he got. He didn't court public attention (solely) for the rewards of fame, but because he was whip smart and wanted to engage.

Compare that to Michael Jackson or Britney Spears (or any number of artists up and down the sliding scale of celebrity). Sure, they wanted to engage with the world through their music and their art, but I don't think they defined themselves as people solely through their craft, and I think (opinion) it should have been their right to determine on what channels they publicly engaged with the world. Not legally, but as a matter of common decency.

Or does everyone who e.g. publishes open source software deserve to be doxxed?

I think there's a big difference between releasing some open-source software and setting out to profit from being a public figure.

Michael Jackson and Britney Spears put themselves front and center. But J.D. Salinger, for example, didn't. I think the former don't really get to complain that people are interested in the product they are selling. Scientists are another good example here. Carl Sagan clearly sought celebrity (and used it very well). Plenty of Nobel Prize winners didn't.

I also agree "wanting to engage" is an important part of it. Steve Bannon clearly likes being in the public eye, while Stephen Miller doesn't. But both of them are seeking to shape the lives of millions, and so to my mind are legitimate focuses of public attention.

I think that line is blurrier than we engineers might often want to admit. What's the difference in the end? Money? A legal contract with stipulations?

I think the core of my question is this. You agree we have a right to choose whether we want to engage with the public. Do we have a fine-grained right to engage in one area of life, but not others?

Historically, I think this has been the case (e.g. keeping family out of politics), but I think the line is blurring over time, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

I think it depends a lot on the manner of engagement and the area of life. Most pop stars don't just sell music. They sell themselves as personalities, as icons. This is often true about politicians as well. Much less so for authors and software developers, though; there, what they're offering is generally the work, not themselves.

I think keeping family out of politics is not so much about keeping one area of the public figure's life private as allowing the family members to keep their own lives private. Maybe that line is blurring, but I'm not sure the public is entirely to blame. Politicians often use families as props and even shields, as when the wife literally stands by a philandering politician in the apology press conference. And the Trump administration has actively involved the whole family in governing. So I'm not sure I'd lay changes here at the feet of social media.

> People who aggressively court public attention should expect to receive public attention

I would only add that in some cases (some of them notable today) people have nothing to contribute besides a desire for public attention. Public attention is not a right or a tap that can be turned on at will, and I don't care to give it to dull, uninteresting and shallow people.

They knowingly take a well understood risk, yes, but that doesn't make it ok. It's also well understood that walking around certain parts of town dressed certain ways is dangerous, but it doesn't make mugging me ok when I do.

Even still, isn't it ok for celebrities not to want to share every detail of their life?

The same celebrities that want to dictate every detail of others' lives?

Explain?

Not the op but I'll give it a try. When a " celebrity" advertises perfumes, watches, clothing, erectile disfunction therapies, etc... they intentionally blend the gap between their public persona and private life for profit.

In such circumstances it is hypocritical in my opinion to complain of invasion of privacy as they literally sold parts of it to the public. It is with a 100% certainty that the simple and the easily excitable will see this as an invitation to get closer.

Edited to clarify my point.

Going from "appears in an ad" to "want to dictate every detail" (GP) requires some serious mental gymnastics in non-euclidean spaces of higher dimensions... I don't know how that sort of conclusion works.

Actually I don't even get the deduction from "appears in an ad" to "hypocritical to complain about invasion of privacy".

Do you think somebody who's appeared in an advert should ever be allowed to seek an injunction against a stalker? Or is that just a choice they've made and have to live with?

And that's why I think it's immoral for parents to put their kids into the entertainment industry. Even if the industry wasn't exploitative the kid has no understanding of what they're giving up and whether it's more important than money.

Maybe we should think about fact that celebrities are people too more often.

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