celebrity gossipAs much as it is possible, I try to avoid celebrity gossip in my daily life. Which, if you’ve ever tried to do, is getting increasingly difficult. I’ll be driving along, listening to the radio or a morning show and then, BOOM! Some stupid story about some minor celebrity is teased before I have a chance to change the station.

Or, I’ll be minding my own business, trying to read the news and BLAM, a headline about some celebrity interferes and I am tempted to click and find out just what did so and so do to piss off so and so. Or even worse! I read the headline and now, I will forever know that Kimye had a kid and named her North. This will now prevent some vital information that I will need during the pending zombie apocalypse from adequately anchoring in my brain. Thanks, Huffington Post, for your hard hitting news.

This is not to criticize you if you happen to enjoy celebrity gossip. I mean, it is interesting. That’s why there is a $3 billion dollar industry built around stalking people and their poor children. Hapa Papa reads The Superficial at least once a week (he says because it’s funny, but I think he just wants to see pictures of hot women) and says he can’t help but know about celebrities because his Yahoo! homepage shows him a TON of celebrity stories. Celebrity news is practically ubiquitous, so I totally understand if a person gives in and reads it.

Besides, this post isn’t to lambaste you if you happen to read celebrity gossip. It’s about why I stopped reading it.

A few years ago, I used to read Perez Hilton and The Superficial everyday. I would read The National Enquirer, look forward to going places with lobbies so I could read their free issues of People or Us Weekly or whatever. (I refused to actually pay money for these things.) In fact, I would often refresh the gossip sites 10-15 times a day (more than I did my Facebook!). It got so bad that I decided to give up celebrity gossip for Lent. But after Lent, I immediately went back to my old ways and read ALL the back issues (starting immediately with Ash Wednesday and didn’t stop until I was all caught up through Easter). Kinda ruined the whole point of Lent, no?

One day, though, I realized that I knew more about celebrity lives than my own friends who I actually knew. And really, celebrities are more like fictional people instead of real people because half of the stuff we read is likely fabricated anyway – and no way a true reflection of their actual lives. But it was a startling and depressing revelation. How could I possibly know more about people I didn’t know, didn’t have a chance of knowing, and probably wouldn’t care for if I did know them, than my own friends? Why was I spending so much of my time and energy learning about their likes, dislikes, activities, children’s names, etc. and not spending my time on pursuits that really mattered to me?

Once I realized this, I went cold turkey. I haven’t regretted a minute of it since.

Now, this doesn’t meant that I don’t occasionally give in and click on slideshows of celebrities without makeup or see pretty pictures of Oscar dresses, but for the most part, I avoid celebrity news. (That’s why when I do see these pictures, I don’t know over half of these “actresses.”) My life has been all the better for it.

Plus, this frees up much needed time to waste on truly important things such as stalking my “real” friends and refreshing Facebook a billion times a day. I know how to live, people. Don’t be jealous.