Why are people famous for who they are rather than what they do?

Stemming from the neanderthalic period many thousands of years ago, humans, and many other species of animal for that matter, have always been privvy to seeing certain males try and establish their dominence over their tribe to become the alpha-male. Back in the early days of humanity, becoming the alpha-male consited of grunting the loudest and being the strongest in fights. Nowerdays however, to become an alpha-person (or an 'A List'er as they're more commonly known), you have to have over 1 million followers on Twitter or be so god-damn important that you have no time for Twitter (notice how Gordon Brown fits into neither of those categories?).

Success in modern society has somehow accidently been placed on the same scale as fame, and the results are somewhat worrying. The days of respect for scientists or politicains are long gone, if you want any respect from people today, you need to be busy auditioning for some TV show, not trying to cure cancer. In a world where we are all so busy with the influx of choice and availability we face, we rely on the media more than ever to keep an eye out in the world around us that we spend so much time ignoring. Which would be fine if you were to read The Guardian and watch Channel 4 News or Newsnight all the time, but the problem with the amount of choice nowerdays is that most people will choose to get their 'news' from outlets such as Heat magazine and Channel 5's new 'news' programme 'OK! TV'.

And in this process of turning people's heads towards the lifes and activities of people who we know, rather than the many serious issues and events that we face, is where we get 'Celebrity Culture', and the worrying thing is the fact we actually buy into it. Soaps and Big Brother have taught us that we like to watch other people living their lives (if only to comment about them around the water cooler the next day) except the problem with both of these examples is that there's only so much you can bitch about normal people, even if they are in extraordinary situations where tram crashes and being forced to leave a house on a Friday night into a crowd of booing idiots. If you apply our mutual liking of following people's lives to genuingly interesting people, then we are exponentially more engaged. My prime example being the runaway sucess of Channel 4's 'Big Fat Gypsy Weddings', a show designed with the sole purpose to allow us bawk and bitch at the arguably outlandish traditions of a minority community. This idea can also be applied to people who we find interesting becuase we're aware of their job, because they are in the media. We see a constestant on 'The X Factor' who we looks like quite a nice person and the media thankfully, in it's all powerful and infinite form, allows us to satisfy our requirement for more information about a person. Perviously, stories about what these 'famous' people off the telly were up to were solely the interest of tabliod newspapers, but the explosion of the internet has led to a greater amount of information being available, leading to a greater demand for this information, something which has, in turn, spread to television as well. Twitter has now allowed not just more information as to a famous person's activities, but also their opinions and thoughts as well, which has led to even great interest and coverage of celebrities.

Previously, once you stopped doing the occupation that made you famous you were then forgotten, as the public had no access or exposure to you. But now with every person being able to issue their own mini press releases on Twitter, our fascination has transferred from what a person actually does to learning everything about them. It's our attention that currently makes people successful and 'alpha' in status. To be honest, I prefered the days of neanderthalic fighting. And I'm a pacifist.