How The Fast Times Of The Paparazzi Came to a Halt

http://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiarosenbaum/downfall-of-the-paparazzi

by KerryJones • 11 years ago

79 45 11 years ago

oxide2• 11 years ago

Good riddance.

lukev• 11 years ago

Not that I disagree, but of all the problems in our society, those suffered by our poor celebrities are somehow the least of my concerns.

bpodgursky• 11 years ago

How dare they successfully make music for a living, and expect their family to live normal lives! The arrogance.

omegaham• 11 years ago

I agree - they know exactly what they're getting into.

"I didn't think that becoming a celebrity would screw up my private life," said no one ever.

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

This is an incredibly dangerous position, all the more dangerous because it doesn't seem so. Fundamentally you are dehumanizing someone. You are denying someone the protections of civilized society, you are refusing to empathize with someone else's suffering. Because their status as famous and/or rich obviates the need for compassion.

And yet, is that even remotely true? Does being rich and famous make someone so much happier and immune from suffering that a little extra suffering here and there (such as invasions of privacy by the paparazzi) still results in net less suffering than the average person? Every indication seems to point toward that not being the case in the vast majority of cases. And there are many indications that the cost of fame can indeed result in significant suffering, as many high profile suicides and overdoses after long battles with drug addiction testify.

Celebrities are just people, they should be treated as such.

bmm6o• 11 years ago

It's a shitty thing and it's a net positive if it goes away. You are free to use your time and energy to pursue those other things that you think are more pressing.

edgesrazor• 11 years ago

Wow, chalk seeing a BuzzFeed article on HN as one of the last things I thought I'd ever see...

mikeyouse• 11 years ago

Buzzfeed does a fair amount of pretty good journalism, many of their articles have appeared here before..

JustFab: The Billion Dollar Startup with a Secret Past [1]

Larry Ellison's Cat Island [2]

Or literally dozens (hundreds?) of others. [3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10278697

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10089747

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=buzzfeed.com

FireBeyond• 11 years ago

It's true. There's definitely a noticeable segment of bitter Reddit users who complain "they stole that content from Reddit", blissfully unaware of the irony that most of the things "stolen" from Reddit often didn't originate on Reddit either, but they like to squawk about BuzzFeed (as it's only theft when it happens -to- Reddit).

hammock• 11 years ago

Just click on the (buzzfeed.com) at the top, dude

sharkweek• 11 years ago

Their newsroom has attracted some pretty big names as of late. I used to find the site childish, but their BuzzFeed News section has won me over.

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

Their newsroom has attracted some pretty big names as of late.

Considering that pretty much all of traditional journalism is now chasing Buzzfeed in style, it doesn't matter if you work for Buzzfeed or the imitators, you'll still be working at a place with the same basic approach. You might as well work at the one that is making the model work, rather than the ones that have latched on to it as the most recent attempt to slow their downward spiral.

dang• 11 years ago

As other users have pointed out, it's not particularly rare, because they produce good articles semi-regularly. We were discussing this the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10405992.

Sites that are mostly junk but also put out the occasional good story are a significant problem for HN. We can't ban them, because losing good stories is worse than tolerating bad ones (the latter are annoying, but get flagged). Our solution is to penalize them, review the stories, and take the penalty off the good ones. The next step will hopefully be to distribute the review process to the community.

chasing3• 11 years ago

I'll only read this if someone copies it and pastes it to another site with the title "12 Crazy Reasons Why the Fast Times Of The Paparazzi Came to a Halt."

Nice that Buzzfeed is doing journalism. Shitty that it's funded off of their content theft...

JulianMorrison• 11 years ago

I honestly see the paparazzi photo scene as comparable to child porn (obviously, lesser, but on the same scale). Here we have a mass market of seemingly ordinary people consuming violations of other people in a way that makes it clear they don't see the victims as other than a source of titillation, an industry that serves this content up to them out of pure asocial greed, and these photographers actually going out there and committing the violations, because it's fun and the money is good if you don't have a working conscience and can depersonalize your prey. Each blames the others.

Guilty, all of them.

derefr2• 11 years ago

Regarding your analogy: I still never had it explained to me who pays child-porn producers.

The economics of invasive celebrity photography go like this: companies pay (down-market) advertisers to get them name recognition; those advertisers pay tabloids for ad-space; the tabloid pays paparazzi for a hook to go on the cover.

What are the comparable economics of child abuse?

coldtea2• 11 years ago

Do the producers actually get paid, from some kind of market, or do they do it to on their own (like "amateur pornography") and just share it / leak it? The moral issues and the huge risks involved seem to big for people to go into that professionally and I can't imagine any viable market.

Secondary sources might get paid for access of course -- or might even not, all those stories in the media always talk about forums / clubs etc. and people exchanging stuff, not so much paying for it.

icanhackit• 11 years ago

While I agree the voyeurism is distasteful and a blatant violation of privacy, in my mind the more egregious aspect comes from the written content accompanying the photos -- The faux narrative about the rich and famous that twists reality into a narcissistic and somewhat psychopathic social order which people try to emulate. Their fictitious stories perpetuate copy-cat behavior from the lower and middle classes yearning to reach the rubicon of celebritydom, leaving a vacuous and cruel chunk of society brainwashed by sadistic fairy-tails.

aaron695• 11 years ago

Paparazzi aren't 100% parasitic. A lot of celebrities get benefit from them.

Princess Di was thought to be a master of the press for instance.

There is a certain amount of celebrities creating their own feeding frenzy.

My issue is more when people not in the game get hit by media storms.

tabio2• 11 years ago

The official inquest concluded that paparazzi killed Princess Di.

"press" != "paparazzi"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana,_Princess_of_Wales#Death

chris_wot3• 11 years ago

And nothing of value was lost.

majani• 11 years ago

Any article about paparazzi is not properly balanced without a mention of the way many, many stars actually cooperate with them for media exposure.

knodi123• 11 years ago

luckily, this article mentioned that,

Little more than a decade ago, stars like Paris Hilton would “inadvertently” leak their plans to the paparazzi — part of the wink-wink symbiotic relationship that fueled their tabloid fame. But what once took an army of clamoring paparazzi can now be tweeted, Instagrammed, Snapchatted, and Vined.

How The Fast Times Of The Paparazzi Came to a Halt

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