Three Reasons Why We Love a Good Celebrity Scandal

Why do you think we love a good celebrity scandal so much? Whenever Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, or Mel Gibson, have an epic meltdown or a new mugshot to unveil, we're sitting there with baited breath waiting for every juicy detail.

Basically it comes down to three things, drama, schadenfreude and escapism. So let's take a look at each of those..

It's real life drama...you can't write this stuff!
We love Reality TV as a culture now because it's real. The truth just happens to be stranger than fiction. Take the Britney Spears saga from a few years back. Could a script writer ever even conceive of the idea that a Pop Star and icon of a generation would have a 55 hour marriage in Las Vegas that was annulled, then marry a backup dancer, have two children, shave her head, wear a pink wig and speak with an English accent, become involuntarily committed, then live under a conservatorship and stage a comeback? Probably not, and if they did executives probably told them that the story wasn't 'real' or 'too crazy'. But that's exactly what unfolded in real life.

Schadenfreude
Basically this is a German word that means we take joy in someone else's despair. Which is sort of horrible to admit to ourselves, but it's true. We don't typically bat an eyelash at an epic Hollywood scandal, especially if that person isn't necessarily a fan favorite or has been in trouble before like Lindsay Lohan. It's akin to seeing someone 'get theirs' and watching a train go completely off the rails, especially one of a spoiled Hollywood celebrity, does have it's joy to us.

It takes our mind off the mundane in our lives.
I don't know about you, but I read Hollywood gossip and news because it's a lot more interesting than my life of laundry, work, kids, and grocery shopping. So when an epic Hollywood scandal hits, I can distract myself with Charlie Sheen's meltdown on a daily basis, rather than have to entertain myself with folding socks or writing a proposal for work. It's escapism at it's best. Let me care about someone else's life for five minutes.

So there you have it. The three basic reasons we love a juicy Hollywood scandal. It's great drama, we take a little joy if it happens to be someone involved we love to hate, and it quite frankly, distracts us from our own lives. We're far enough removed from it that it still remains on an entertainment level for us, and not something that directly impacts us in any way.