Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / Why We Give Celebrities Too Much Power Over Us
Transcript
- Malcolm: The response ⁓ that I've like elicited like from the black community and like from like our immediate like peers and and people that we know, it it made too it made two things like very clear. One, there are there are like there's there are like an insane number of like parasocial people that just live among us and like it's just like completely normal. Like like when I say parasocial, like I'm talking about like these are people that like like literally treat these celebrities as if they are family members, as if they know them, as if they are like good friends with them. And it is actually like mind boggling, bro. Like I'm seeing videos of people crying that Dirk is out, bro. I've seen videos of people like losing their minds, like literally throwing parties, putting shit on putting stuff on the grill because Dirk is free, bro. And it's like of these people have real family in jail and y'all have never celebrated like ⁓ Hey, I ⁓ it. We love Dirk. He's an awesome artist. We we love to see him back out on the streets, bro. Not literally the streets, but like w we want to see him keep dropping music, right? Yes, we get that. The other piece though, in in it in parallel with the parasocial angle, ⁓ is it ⁓ I I hate to be that guy because I know people gonna be like, bro, you're trying to be different. You're just trying to sound educated, woo-doo. And and that's the problem, right? That's the exact problem. Like the CIA is up a thousand on us right now because of exactly how I would think, bro. Bro, we are so ignorant that we are we are literally celebrating someone getting acquitted for someone is still going to jail for murdering somebody. People admitted to murdering people. Yes, Duk Dirk may be the lone survivor in this in this case, but there are people literally going to jail for killing people. Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Malcolm: For doing murder for hire for like for for all of this, right? Like for like and it's like it's like we're just completely ignoring that fact and just celebrating the fact that someone has has beat this trial. But it's like I think people have a hard time like separating like and understanding like Dirk is an incredible artist, but we also have to understand like the message that his music, his brand, and what he stands for kind of like sends to our community, especially to like younger generations that are like that like look up to celebrities to kind of like figure out What type of lifestyle they want to live going forward. And it's it does a lot of irreparable irreparable damage in my opinion, bro. Because like we did the same thing when like dudes like Youngboy got out, when Thug got out. And yes, we love seeing these artists drop their music, bro. But it's like I feel like people have a hard time sometimes, like being able to like delineate between like artists and like what they stand for. They can only think in like terms of like they they think very, very narrowly when it comes to stuff like this. And There's a whole, you know, rabbit hole we can go down this, but I I would just kind of like try to keep it as surface level as possible 'cause I don't want to get too too ⁓ into like the race theory kind of thing. But I I I do think that this is like there's a lot of like like ignorance, ⁓ and a bit of ⁓ like just a high level of like just just being parasocial, I'm seeing, on display from like everyone. ⁓ and it's it's pretty concerning 'cause like I said, I think this is just telling of where we are. culturally as a community and like the type of it kinda just makes me wonder 'cause like how often do you see us celebrate about like things like as a as a collective, right? Like I'm talking about everyone on the same page. We are s we are we are like in tune like celebrating. Like are people gonna like are people gonna have these these same type of reactions when it's like midterm election time? Like are we gonna have these same type of reactions when we see like you know what I'm saying? So it's like it's kinda ⁓ it's kinda it's kinda it's kind of a a a interesting, you know way to my approach I guess. Like that's kinda like how I've been thinking about it. ⁓ and yeah, ⁓ I'm I'm curious to hear ⁓ hear to hear hear hear your thoughts though, bro.