An Ounce of Celebrity Gossip

The nightmare grocery store lines just became ten times longer as the magazine aisle suddenly disappeared and turned into a health aisle. What a shame! Now the only source for magazines are around the check out areas. Perhaps the magazines were moved in order to stop customers from reading those gossip stories in the store, instead making them buy them, but this clearly did not work. People generally grab a few of those "shocking," but most times untrue, magazines with quotations on them, taking their good old time putting the items they would like to purchase on the shopping belt, just to get every little free ounce of gossip about a celebrity's life that they could skim through in a matter of seconds.

Scandalous quotations entice all kinds of people, both young and old, rich and poor, intelligent and foolish, and even both men and women. It is the most popular way to lure the customers in the check out line into buying magazines. Who would not want to know the latest news about a drama filled celebrity, when one's own life seems to be so dull and boring? This is the general feeling for a majority of society as their lives seem to be so tedious when compared to the unrealistic lives celebrities are portrayed to live in most magazines. A recent copy of Star magazine informs readers that " Nicole's Baby [is] in Danger!" OK! magazine quotes Victoria Beckham saying "I wanted out, I just couldn't take it anymore." InTouch asks readers "Is Angela Pregnant Already?" National Examiner uses the catchy phrase "Busted! Oprah Drunk Driving Shocker," to get Oprah fans and haters eager to know the scoop about what really happened.

"Why don't they leave that poor Britney girl alone! Always be getting up in her grill. Let the girl live," a woman on food stamps shouted to the other customers at Shop Rite in West Haven, all huddling around trying to get a glimpse of the last copy of National Enquirer - "Britney Fails Drug Test and Drives through Red Light." The magazine companies surely achieved their goal with the news stories this week. A woman who must be relatively poor on food stamps could not resist buying the last copy of "Britney News", even though she thought everyone should "leave that poor Britney girl alone." Little does the woman know she is actually promoting paparazzi to continue bothering her by buying the magazine, essentially increasing the demand for gossip on this celebrity.

So what is it about a quotation that drives these gossip readers haywire? Anyone that is interested in gossip stories can not bare getting part of a story, so if they are only told one little quote, they need to rummage through the pages in order to get the full story. It is quite a clever tool the magazine companies have depended on more and more as the years have progressed. Though the front page quote in a magazine is 95% of the time misleading and off subject to what the article on the celebrity is actually about, the degraded quotations are much more appealing than the true facts because it is what the reader wants to hear. Though it is quite sad, what the reader demands to read about are often times negative ideas that make a celebrity look bad rather than good. No one wants to read a story about the success stories of celebrities; they want to know the dirt. A gossip lover would much rather read about Oprah Winfrey busted for drinking and driving than an article about when her school was successful, even though that is no longer true. Lindsay Lohan gossip seekers would rather obtain an article about Lindsay caught doing drugs or her "rehab hook-up" than read that she went through a great drug recovery and is essentially doing great in life.

"People are like obsessed with celebrities and they're obsessed with them failing and doing bad. Everything you read is like false. Sometimes like people have quotes and say things that I didn't even say. They make artificial quotes and they put them in the magazines," said Avril Lavigne during a recent interview done by Buzz Bishop on 95 Crave in Vancouver.

What has this led to? Though there are many allegations and it is unproven, it is an acceptable idea to believe that celebrities are cashing in on the demand for news about them by allowing paparazzi to take pictures of them in awkward situations. Though readers already know celebrities sell pictures over to magazines from time to time, most do not know that Britney Spears allegedly makes extra money by letting paparazzi take pictures of her with her skirt up and thong showing, or for that matter, even nothing showing. The readers want to believe these stories are real, but they usually are not, just as shows such as "MTV: Total Request Live" are fake. The celebrities on the show read off a posterboard what they have to say, they get painted with make-up during commercials, and the people in the background are even getting cued when to clap and if they need to be louder. Spears, a celebrity who claims she wants to be left alone, makes her manager get information on what is going on at different locations and hotels and arranges deals with magazine companies to take pictures and interview her there. However, when she arrives at the location, she acts as if it were an unplanned visit. It is a win, win situation for celebrities. Even though most claim they hate being followed around all day and dumb-founded people such as Chris Crocker want everyone to "Leave Britney alone" in his humiliating YouTube video, celebrities essentially set themselves up to be stalked by saying it is alright when they want to make a profit off of the paparazzi.

Though most readers buy a magazine to read about the cover article that seems so breathtaking, the readers always get short changed and still continue to buy the magazine. The worth while cover article is usually in the middle of the magazine and only a couple of paragraphs long, maybe a page if one is lucky. The rest of the magazine is filled with a few short stories, but basically just page after page of ads that the magazine profits from. Not much work is even put into the magazines. After the interesting front page is made and the article about the celebrity is ready to go, all the magazine company must do is set up the pages of advertisements which is relatively easy as many companies are eager to advertise their products in the fast growing magazine business.

Magazine companies do have some competition though, which will undoubtedly lead to an extinction in the years to come as more people become computer accessible. Online celebrity gossip web sites, such as Perez Hilton, provide anxious gossip seekers with 24/7, up-to-date news on everything going on when it comes to celebrities. Unlike magazines, web sites are free since they get their money from advertisements on their web page and from page views. Who can beat gossip for free? These online sources also provide much more for those picky gossip searchers who would have trouble sifting though magazine after magazine looking for the "dirt" on the celebrity that they crave. One can select from a list of hundreds of celebrities which one they want to get the scoop on. People can see videos including the infamous "Britney running over the paparazzi's foot", and web sites like Perez Hilton even draw on pictures of the foolish celebrities, like Lindsay Lohan, adding humor into the already funny gossip.

Though most can not resist free online sources of celebrity gossip to fuel their addiction, for now, magazine companies are retaliating by luring on those customers that do not have access to the internet or are still simply unaware that they could get the same gossip, most times even better, online for free. Magazine companies have begun to issue more frequent copies of their magazines in order to increase business and keep readers up-to-date, as well as lower their prices.

Sadly, this may not be enough. Despite attempts to recover losses by making compact discs cheaper, music stores among other types of businesses have died out because of ways of downloading music online for cheaper and more conveniently. The same will in turn happen to magazine companies, as the number out their will slowly dwindle and instead, one will find more sources of celebrity gossip right at their fingertips. By that time, Celebrity Gossip Addiction Anonymous and Rehabilitation will be inevitable.