>Saying that some art is better than other art started sounding too much like saying that some people are better than other people.
I think this is a more important line than the author even appreciates. It's complex, but it's easy to see that people have generally leveraged the label of "art" is a defense against criticism, and it usually takes this form.
If someone likes to listen to whatever clearly "trashy" pop music is famous at the moment, they have learned that they don't need to feel shame for doing so- all they have to do is call it art and all of a sudden they're absolved of all the negative connotations associated with the consumerist aspects of that music.
Of course, it's not hard to recognize that if you're willing to call anything made by a person "art," then the concept of "art" will have lost all meaning. Sure, the newest Marvel movie was engineered by a huge team of professionals who designed it to generate as much profit as possible, but there's a human involved who likely put some creative effort into the project, therefore it is art and it is absolved of any criticism that doesn't treat it as such.
>I think this is why we now tolerate such blatant greed among famous people: we think we have a chance of becoming one of them. We once saw ourselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires; now we see ourselves as temporarily unknown celebrities.
I don't buy this exactly. I think it's more like: people associate their being so personally with celebrities that they feel as though they're already almost famous themselves just by being their fan. It's the "parasocial" dynamic that people have been recognizing more and more.
I think this does end up cropping up in the form of leveraging fandom to make yourself a celebrity (e.g., the fans that appear the most obsessed are the same ones who can be known for being the fans which are the most obsessed), but I don't think that is the core motivation.
>If we want this to stop, the solution is simple: we have to stop eating Lady Gaga’s Oreos. We have to stop pretending that celebrities are just like us, and that their success is our success. We have to redraw the line between art and entertainment, and more importantly, we have to redraw the line between art and advertisement.
This is the "fun" part of all of this.
If "we" need to do something to stop this, then "we" are fucked. People are in way too deep at this point to turn this around anytime soon in any meaningful way.
The reality is that "you" need to do what is best for "you" and to recognize that the huge swaths of the population who are addicted to consumerism on this level should be treated similarly to how we treat people addicted to drugs or gambling: have pity, try to help them help themselves, but ultimately don't let them drag you down with them.
This might seem overly dramatic, but this dynamic does come with a huge cost: literally money. If you're spending your money on overpriced bullshit, then you're no longer able to spend or invest that money on things that can have a much greater ROI (where that return may be in the form of money, or it could be more meaningful experiences, things that make you genuinely happy, etc.). Just the same, all of these products detract from your capacity to experience in general. When you're spending any amount of your capacity thinking about, consuming, discussing, etc., Lady Gaga's Oreos, then that as capacity not spent on things that matter much more.
The worst part is that this isn't limited to people irrationally consuming celebrity endorsed products. Right now, you're reading my comment about some dumb post on a dumb website where my point doesn't matter. You're consuming this instead of spending your time being productive. Embarrassingly, I've sunk way more time into this comment than you have reading it, so I'm not any better off. But I like to think I'm getting something more meaningful out of this than just mindlessly consuming products made for the lowest common denominator (even if it is just marginal), so at least I can feel a bit superior in that regard.