Last week, after a long and exhausting day, my roommate and I settled down on the couch for a relaxing evening of TV. Finding the channel set to E! News and too lazy to change it, we prepared ourselves for the latest celebrity gossip.
The program started with a grown man getting heated about whether Zayn leaving One Direction was bad for his career. The discussion was, hands down, the most ridiculous thing I have experienced while at the University. And this is a pretty impressive claim to make, considering I have seen a man in a pea costume playing a flute, a professor nearly hit a student in the face with a bowling ball, and not one, not two, but three people take a nap on the ground at the Foxfield races.
While Zayn’s decision to leave One Direction is life changing for him and the other members of the group, it is of no serious consequence to anyone outside his immediate circle. Whether or not Jennifer Lopez is still dating her backup dancer, Kim Kardashian’s various hair colors and what kind of meal Nick Jonas orders at Mr. Chow’s should not matter to anyone besides themselves — and definitely should not cause a grown man to become enraged.
The half an hour of hard-hitting news I was too lazy to turn off taught me about more than Taylor Swift’s new love affair. As I watched, it became clear that this influx of celebrity gossip is nearly impossible to avoid. If I turn off the TV, I will still come across news about Beyoncé via Facebook or daily conversation with friends.
It seems that, in this day and age, we are expected to know all of the unnecessary and trivial information coming out of Hollywood. However, if we want to have a conversation instead about the caste system in India, the conversation goes dead. Checking Instagram is more common than checking the news and when there’s a live feed on Snapchat, it’s more talked about than the front cover of the New York Times.
I am not — but maybe should be — ashamed to admit that “The Real Housewives” series is the sole reason I own a television. However, I try to remain conscious about the ratio between brainwashing reality shows and important news I consume.
While it may be impossible to completely cut yourself off from celebrity gossip, it is possible to strike a balance between world conflict, the economy, current affairs and Jennifer Aniston still wearing clothes that show her nipples. For me, celebrity news and world news are both valuable — for different reasons. I enjoy scoffing at Kanye’s most recent tweet with my friends, but I also make the protracted effort to learn about their views on NSA’s surveillance programs, race relations at the University and anything in between.
Although “boy toy named Troy used to live in Detroit” — the oh-so-eloquent phrase made famous by Nicki Minaj — is a more recognizable quote than “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” Oscar Wilde was ahead of his time with this thought. If we spend less time gawking at the wealthy lives of celebrities, we can enhance our own in numerous ways, whether it be simply removing that point of comparison or devoting more time to concrete and valuable actions.
Avery’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at a.moyler@cavalierdaily.com.
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