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Review: Living In Emergency
In media, saturation is key. This weekend in Los Angeles, there are two storms wrecking their havoc on our city; one of them involves buckets of rain, and the other involves Britney Spears. Both of them are causing different kinds of deluges.
Rainfall totals aside, Britney's most recent series of very high profile breakdown-ing, meltdown-ing, custody losing, and hospital admitting actions has caused a media frenzy, which probably doesn't come as much surprise to most. The internet's most loved gossip troll, Perez Hilton, proudly boasted Brit-Brit's server-overloading impact on his site today, declaring:
You guys really care about Britney Spears - a lot!So what gives? Do we really like Britney Spears all that much? Here on LAist, we work hard to share with our fellow city dwellers the stories that resonate on the local level (even if they take place somewhere else at times), and when helicopters are swirling above our heads in the East Valley as a substance-enhanced Ms. Spears barricades herself with one of her babies in her Studio City bedroom, it becomes local news. Popular sites like Google and Yahoo!'s news sections are saturated with the onetime pop diva's name and headlines from around the world sharing takes on her tales of scandal and woe. And the hits fall like, well...rain.Friday was the busiest day we've ever had on PerezHilton.com.
Over the course of 24 hours, we had over 10 million page views. 10,089,428 to be exact.
That's insane!
Thanks, Britney.
Get well soon!
This leaves us to ask: Why does Britney matter? Is it the tumultuous lives of her young sons that tug at heartstrings and have us act as watchdogs for their well-being? Spears--the girl who once caused a collective gasp by locking lips with Madonna on MTV--lost her role model status quite some time ago, and has seemed for some time to not be concerned with its redemption, nor with the quality of her musical offerings, which have been in rapid decline since probably her sophomore album. We as a society are as addicted to Britney's bad behavior as she is to whatever drug of choice she imposes on her system as well as the paparazzi attention she claims to shun. Like the proverbial car crash we can't help but rubberneck, Britney's fall from grace down the rabbit hole of her own creation (and perpetuation), is something we can't help but gawk at. She's more than just a sexy poster on a teenager's wall (circa 2002, admittedly)--she's schadenfreude in action.
So Perez, how sincere is your wish for Britney to "get well soon?" I think we like her exactly where she is. And Los Angeles, right now she's ours.
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when most of the media is owned by the entertainment industry or is devoted to celebrity, what choice do we have? i find it disgusting that we are being bombarded with the news of someone who is having an extremely difficult time. what do you all want...for her to commit a very public suicide by hounding her to do it? is she going to be our very own tragic princess di? what kind of stupid outpouring of grief are you going to jam down our throats once she really does something stupid to herself or others...it ain't news. or worth your ink in reporting, commenting on...it's gossip.
Um, Scruz, I'm not British but comparing Britney to Princess Di seems pretty disrespectful and wrong...
i think a better comparison would be to compare her to Howard Hughes, not princess di.
i think everyone loves a good rags-to-riches story, and vice versa a riches-to-rags story.
i think its fascinating that despite all her wealth, she has so many problems. Problems that appear to only grow and multiply.
Britney is 26 years old, and the time for her to point the finger at her mother, her management, or anyone else for the problems in her life has long passed.
A person can't play the victim forever...
you guys have missed the point. scuz wasn't comparing the two as emblems of humanitarian work or anything of the sort. princess di was a woman literally killed by excessive media attention. the comparison is valid.
Good point, Anti. Although, I'm still gonna point my finger at her parents, because of a certain real-life Juno named Jamie Lynn. Well done, Mr. and Mrs. Spears. I think her parents got way too wrapped up in Brit's early success and enjoyed what it brought them initially. I also think lack of education plays a role in her demise.
It's a little meta to report on reporting, but I don't think we here at LAist are part of those in the press who are "hunting her down"--comparison to Princess Di a bit unbalanced, but not wholly unfair if we're talking the sheer force of the paparazzi.
Scruz, I question a few things in your last words: "what kind of stupid outpouring of grief are you going to jam down our throats once she really does something stupid to herself or others...it ain't news. or worth your ink in reporting, commenting on...it's gossip."
First, the use of the you pronoun. I'm not going to jam anything down your throat, nor have we so far. While I recognize we're part of the collective media, there's a bit of apples and oranges in this scenario. Second, you say "once" she really does something stupid--uhhhh, hasn't she already done a shitload of really stupid things, from flashing her crotch to photogs to binging on drugs and booze to traffic incidents to not putting her kid in a carseat to shaving her head...whew. And lastly, I said in the post why it's news, whether we like it or not, it's happening here and people seem to want to know about it--overwhelmingly so!
I think there are two issues here, neither of which we may ever be able to answer to any degree of satisfaction: Why is Britney "having a painful time" and why do we care so much about it?
It's tragic for sure, but in a world of 24-hour news, what can you do? The networks need filler. The internet hasn't helped things either. Once upon a time, news like this would probably only be available on a grocery aisle. Now, it's everywhere.
Thanks LAist for not ramming it down our throats. You should be commended.
princess di was a woman literally killed by excessive media attention. the comparison is valid.
Get your facts straight. Princess Di was killed by a drunk driver who slammed her car into a concrete pillar at 65mph. It didn't help that she wasn't wearing a seat belt.
this is what happens when you become a worshiped corporate teen sex idol at 16 yrs old.
Mikay...
"Get your facts straight."
You're a paporazzo, arn't you?