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Comment by shard | Hacker News Reader

The other replies to your comment don't seem to address your fundamental point that the Kardashians and their kind are in a different category than other celebrities. Their skills are not acting or singing or sports, but rather generating news to keep themselves in the headlines. I don't really recall this being a category until the start of reality TV, and even then it was short-lived after the shows ended. It wasn't until Paris Hilton that I was really aware of how powerful this category can be, and others have figured out the formula as well, leading to the Kardashians and other influencers. The successful ones have the social intelligence to know how and what kind of outrageous or salacious news to generate to attract people who like to feel envy, indignation, and a sense of superiority to famous people to watch their antics, and thus feed the hype machine that keeps them in the spotlight and allows them to reap the rewards of that spotlight.

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Yes, this is something the 45th US president did quite well

Trump is arguably one of the first successful reality TV stars. He basically laid the groundwork.

The Kardashians took up the ball that Paris Hilton dropped.

This is a solid point about Donald Trump. I owned the Trump board game as a kid. (Released in 1989! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump:_The_Game) We thought he was such a goof, but he was definitely a social media star before social media networks.

Kim Kardashian was Paris Hilton's intern and appeared on Paris Hilton's show. I don't think that was accidental.

It comes down to two things: consistency of brand, and constantly creating content. Media does the rest. If you think about 45, he almost always wore the same thing, put his name on everything, applied the same style of opinions to everything (either loved or hated something, with limited nuance). Offered a simple opinion on everything.

He was always slightly outrageous which the left wing media had a job dealing with in a way that did not benefit him. He'd say something a bit bad which was then on the cover of all the newspapers when it would have been politically better to ignore him.

I think you're giving them a lot more credit than is due. they are merely puppets poorly acting out situations scripted by people who do understand how to market their products

That's no different than actors and singers, who act out situations scripted by their publicists and managers who understand how to market their products. Regardless, we are talking about the kind of product that's being sold, which is fundamentally different than those sold by actors and singers.

actors and singers are contributing to the arts, plus they require at least an iota of talent, which is more than can be attributed to those vapid degenerates

Yes, and this is exactly Marcus Holmes's point.

But they are billionaires and we are not

I don't think this category is entirely new. Drama and gossip always was a prominent topic among people, even before global media was a think. But what shifted over time was the quality of content that was allowed to surface in media. In the 80s and 90s cheap trash-content became a think, to feed the growing demand for content, and to lower the costs of production, but also because people learned more about the culture of modern media. And with this movement, many types of content which were former just local stuff that people did privatly, became professionalised for TV and pushed to the whole world. So it really was just a matter of time till even parasocialicer made their appearence.

And with parasocialicer I mean the type of people who's main effect is to be someone who'se existence people can enjoy, without delivering anything actually skillfull outside of social interaction. Similar to cat- or dog-content.

Certainly there's nothing new under the sun. The difference is the degree in which these people are prominent in media and the zeitgeist, to the point where they make a comfortable living from this work.

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