Doomed to Fail - Ep 175: Just stop watching award shows - Psychology of celebrity obsession

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Let's talk about celebrities & our obsession with them. Farz will walk us through some examples, from fun things like Taylor having a Prince William poster to very scary things like someone sitting on the Queen's bed while she slept. Why do we feel connected to people we've never met, and how can they feel safe with so many strangers knowing intimate details of their lives? Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do. And we are back. Hi, Taylor. How are you? Good. How are you? I am doing well. It seems like only yesterday we were recording your episode and here many, many days later we're recording mine. Look at that. Crazy. Crazy how time applies.

I'm going to do a solid for all of us and remember to ask you to introduce us Oh, hello everyone Welcome to June to Fail We are the podcast It brings you history's most

notorious disasters and failures twice a week And I am Taylor joined by Fars Who will be telling us a story? I will be telling us a story And I don't know This might be controversial

It might not be I don't know if folks are going to fill about this one But I thought it was really interesting So I'm just going to cover the topic of obsessions. Okay.

But I'm going to couch it within a topic that I think might be slightly controversial. And that is that I personally fundamentally hate celebrity culture in the U.S. I think it's really stupid. How much we idolize people that are just rich and famous. Totally. Thank you.

So I really thought of this because I listened to The Rock talking about how in 2023 like some political party that we don't know of approach him or run for president. He might have won because like that's how obsessed with like celebrity we are. It's kind of not not great.

But I went into a discovery of like celebrity driven obsession. So I'm going to cover some actual conditions that lead to celebrity obsessions and then talk about some cases of them throughout history that, you know, are usually pretty notable. And yeah, discuss that. That's what I've got. That's what I've been going on. Cool. So there's going to be five conditions I'm going to be talking about.

So one, the first one is Celebrity Worship Syndrome. The second is Eratomania, which sounds like what you think it sounds like. Then there is obsessive love disorder. Then there is Celebrity Stalker Syndrome. Then there's a not yet actual defined but assumed thing called parasycial relationship Disorder, which we are getting really good at as a society, given social media. All right. So going to the first one, so Celebrity Worship Syndrome, so this is an obsession addiction disorder,

similar to how people get addicted like gambling or shopping. 70 to 80% of the people that suffer from this are male. They typically have other, like, behavior problems like low self-esteem and ability to establish or maintain personal friendships or relationships. And there's a variation of this type of. obsession that has a subcategory mostly aptful to younger girls called entertainment social celebrity worship syndrome there's a lot of categories that's one there's like 50 different ways to slice and dice that kind of like that's how bad

we are about this we're so obsessed with celebrities that we have to have like 50 categories for them so the entertainment social celebrity kind um that's like the what we think when we think of like an unhealthy like child like obsession with celebrities when we think of 13 to 20 year olds like who get eating disorders because their favorite celebrity it's like crazy thin it's like yeah they have like 50 chefs and like 20 people like right it's their job yeah it's their job to be like super fit another subcategory here is the love obsessional celebrity worship type and this one is a little bit deeper than just having low self-esteem these are people with like actual mental disorders like

schizophrenia a known example of this and a kind of a sad one is a woman named Margaret Mary Ray, who, despite having never met David Letterman or ever being in a room with David Letterman or ever communicating with David Letterman, became so obsessed with him that she thought they were in like a legit relationship. Yeah, at some point, she actually broke onto his property, stole his Porsche with her kid, her little boy, Alex, in the pastor's seat, and drove off with it, only to be arrested eventually. And when she was arrested and picked up, she was like, no, like this is, this is our, Alex's his son too we're married

like she was super super obsessed and like oh my god that poor kid yeah and it's scary for David Letterman so David Letterman to his credit like he would talk about this every now and then like you know how he did his top 10 list he like put like on one of them he was like remember to change her address

that lady stops breaking into your house like you would address it but later on like way after the events here he would talk about how he never wanted to like say her name out there or like put her on like public blast because she knew that he was she knew that he was obviously mentally sick

in total she broke into his house eight times and she suffered from severe mental illness so she had a family of schizophrenics like that's what she comes from both of her brothers had severe schizophrenia and both committed suicide and she herself in the late 1990s would also commit suicide oh my god yeah she had a lot of problems poor thing yeah not not good then

you have erotabania and again you can probably guess what that is this is a mental disorder that results to someone thinking another person is infatuated with them so this one this one is more common with women in the Wikipedia article states that

this is like the object of the desire is typically a man who is like completely unobtainable so think of like people who think that like a woman recently gave up $850,000 of her life saving or something because Brad Pitt was writing to her saying that he needed money for surgery like those pictures unbelievable did you see that yeah

wait whose pictures were unbelievable the ones that he had sent her the guy was where they were they were like pictures of like Brad Pitt in the hospital but it was obviously like a photoshop face of Brad Pitt over someone in the hospital it's so sad that's so sad I've listened to so many of these like um these money talk kind of shows where it's like an elder child writes in or calls in as like hey my my father who's like 87 years old with dementia thinks that like you know insert famous woman is like in love with them and it's like horrible some people are terrible um so i wasn't 100% clear on the difference between this and the love obsessional celebrity worship disorder other than in this case the person suffering

from the disorder is convinced the other person loves them versus being a delusional state of thinking you're in a relationship with them so you just think that they're into you like crazy you know the totemic example is that because i'm sorry is that because like so in well in like the brad pit case someone was talking to her so that would be you know what actually yeah that would be the love obsessive one i think actually maybe it's not even to just you know what i take it back maybe the brad pit one isn't even a disorder because that might just be a scam yeah i think that was just a scam because then like the david letterman lady like no one was pretending to be David Letterman talking to her.

That's good point. She just, like, thought he was talking to her, right? That's good point. Yeah. The example, so the very first case that was, like, cited is, like, this is a disorder that we need to, like, know what it is and study it. It was a French woman who was convinced that King George V was in love with her and would stand outside of Buckingham Palace and assumed that the way that the curtains moved inside was handling signals, yeah. Oh, fuck.

Yeah, so I think, like, that's the difference to the day. David Letterman, it was like, David Letterman had like no interaction, like nothing at all. Where this was like, okay, you can kind of see the guy and you, you, this happens a lot with like now with Instagram and stuff where people think that their celebrities are sending their messages like through their posts. So pretty sad and scary. Yeah.

Then you have obsessive love disorder. This one's really, really like scary. This is when somebody has this overwhelming desire to possess and a protection of a person. When I think of people who's like partner to. kills them i think of this i think this is the like if i can't have you nobody can situation you know and there's actually a really famous case of this out there do you know who it might be is it the guy who killed the actress so that one actually yeah that actually is one of them that i didn't put that one down but that was one of them that was listed um i was

thinking about selina because if you so selina was like a super famous chicano singer um I guess, like, what, 90s or something? Yeah. And there's this woman named Yolanda Saldivar, who was a super fan of hers. Like, she went to one concert and, like, totally fell in love with Selena. And went back and started a Selena fan club, even though she was a nurse. Eventually, she quit being a nurse and just, like, only ran this fan club. And kind of being the first of the thing that's kind of niche, she rise to prominence.

So Selena eventually figured out who this woman is. And she came on the payroll and was, like, a part of her team. part of like the business venture of what she was doing. Eventually, Selena became business partners and probably romantically linked to this guy named Ricardo Martinez who was telling her, look, like, I can actually help you expand your business too. I can bring it into Mexico because he was in Mexico.

And Yolanda, like, started trying to box Selena in and away from this guy, like, get away from him. Like, your mind. You know, like, it was one of those deals. and around this time Selina also learned that she had been stealing money from the fan club and just fired her basically and it was there after

that this woman shot her and killed her she was like 23 like she was a kid it was crazy that's what it was like this obsessive love this order where it was like I need like I had you I lost you now I it's almost like a lover's thing there was no lover

fit to it. So, then we have, but you're right, the other, the one that you mentioned, I forgot what her name was, but this happened like 2017 or 20,

was it 22 or 20, I think it was 22 actually, where this guy, the singer was sending autographs and then this guy shot her in the middle of signing autographs. That's not even the one I'm talking about. There was another one where the guy

went to the girl's house and killed her. There's more than one example of this, obviously, yeah. Yeah, it's not good. It's not good that we can't even think of which one was the example. But then we have like my favorite of all this. And my favorite is the celebrity soccer syndrome. So this pathology comes from a fixation on a celebrity that can lead to violence and is actually its own.

It's a form of borderline personality disorder. So the most classic example of this would be Andrew Kinanan because of his obsession with wealthy gay men and the most famous of wealthy gay men, which was Johnny Versauch. and he just wanted to kind of like wipe him off the planet because of his jealousy and his need for attention. Then there are two other really fun ones. One is John Hinkley Jr. Who thought that killing Ronald Reagan

would make Jody Foster fall in love with him. Oh, my God. And here's an interesting thing. I didn't know this. I picked this up in the middle of the research. So it's interesting because this type of disorder is often also inclusive of a narcissistic personality disorder

because the stalker thinks that they can obtain this person. Right. Like they're crazy because they actually think of that like, I'm trying to think like an incredibly beautiful woman, me be like, oh yeah, I can totally get that. Like, you're nuts, right? Like, you'd actually be out of your mind. Plus, Jody Foster is

gay as shit, so he was never going to her. But I don't think she was out back then. No, she wasn't, but I'm just saying that it wasn't going to work out anyways. No. So what's interesting is, in this case, Hinkley actually knew he was a loser. His reasoning for shooting Reagan, which I never knew, was he thought it would make him so famous that him and Jody Foster would finally be on the same celebrity wavelength. Is that wild?

Yeah. Like, it's almost cunning if it wasn't so stupid. Like, he worked around his narcissist personality to identify that he's a loser. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird that he got that far with it. And then the other favorite of mine is Mark David Chapman. the guy who killed John Lennon and his whole thing was he was obsessed

with the Beatles but then after they broke up he thought John Lennon was like this huge phony mostly because he would sing about love and peace and all the world needed no possessions then also had a billion dollar net worth like stupid rich and then the yet undefined but identifiable

version of what's going on right now is a parissocial relationship disorder so this is when an individual forms of one side of emotional intense relationship with a person they don't actually know in real life but it's usually because you've been given a form of access that makes you think that you're close

to that person. Right. And here's what we're going to do with a hate male is going to start. Beyonce and Taylor Swift. So these two are probably the most emblematic celebrities whose fan base thinks that they are a part of their lives. Like they have this investment in them and this parissocial relationship that is

like a little bit abnormal. I would argue. Right. you can like see everything that they're doing you know so you think that you're like even though like their social media is super curated yeah yeah the other one that you could probably talk more about than i could that came up in the middle of the research was bt s and kpop because apparently they explicitly tell their fans like i you're the only reason i exist or

we belong together they like yeah yeah yeah directly to them mm-hmm is that true yeah probably not good No, I'm sure there are so many women. Like my sister used, well, she like loves boy bands. And like, she used to, her and her friends used to go to the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas. You could like be like in the, in the, whatever, in the audience. And man, she would like cry. They would cry so hard. They would lose their minds.

One of her friends used to write poetry to the guy from Sugar Ray. And he like would like see her and be like, oh, hi. And like, she would like give him a book of poetry. poetry. Wow. Okay. So that's another big one is when it goes into like the unhealthy territories, when you start actually trying to communicate and engage and like make these things a reality.

What's interesting is that it is dramatically more pervasive today because of social media. Yeah. And now it's pervasive beyond just like normal celebrities because of apps like only fans. now anybody that post something content wise on an athlete that they think that they're in a relationship with that person they think like they're doing this like for me and

yeah you're just creating a man we're just all going to live like the Matrix at some point like in a little tube and like it would just be everything's going to be VR reality because like I don't think we're both of you to assume that we're not doing that right now oh my God oh my God

um but yeah and I think I think, I think this is like, so we, I, okay, I'm going to be totally honest here. I think I kind of know what this feels like because our favorite podcast back in the day, I mean, I haven't really listened to it anymore ever since everything went down was last podcast on the left. And it was three guys who were together for like seven, eight years. I forgot, I don't even know how long it was. And then there were some accusations made and they kicked one of the guys out of the group. And that's kind of when I dropped off.

I stopped listening to because it just like, it just shattered the illusion, I think, a little bit of like, I'm a part of this friend group that. Like, I can just hear them talking and make jokes. I'm kind of a part of it. And, but we, we saw on social media all these, like, hundreds of rounds of fans who were just, like, so invested, pulling all the content. Like, this person said this on this episode. It was scary. It was getting a little scary. And, like, I kind of put myself in those shoes because, again, why did I stop listening to it when they kicked him off?

It's only because I felt like I was a part of a group and the group broke up. Yeah. No, totally. It feels, I mean, I still listen, but it feels different and yes. I mean, and also like, yeah, I feel like, if, I feel like, especially in that case, like, if we ever, like, I know so much about them, you know, and like, they, like, don't know that I, that I exist, which is just weird. Yeah. Also, I think they did them dirty, and I think that's part of the reason why I have resentment. I haven't listened to them.

I don't really, yeah, who knows? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Who knows. But, yeah. but anyways

I'll be honest this is a short one but that's kind of all I have for this one is just like the various ways in which we get obsessed with celebrity and we really need to stop doing that and I hope that yeah I don't know what it is

like I it's weird and vulgar to me but again like we lived in L.A and like it wasn't a thing in L.H like focus on people's celebrity you know? No yeah I mean like well you would like see celebrities like at the store

yeah you would just see them as human beings like it was it was like a normal thing whereas like I don't know when I see them on like the red carpet it's like they're giving each other awards and like we're supposed to like pay attention to what they're wearing it's like why are we doing this like I like I like sometimes I'm like this is fun and then sometimes I'm like why I'm watching these rich people give each other awards yeah yeah they're playing make believe like yeah so it was the lowest form of career like 200 or 100 years ago right we talked about that and now we know well whatever you get a lot of money and that's i don't know if like that's that's a thing and it feels like glamorous like there was

like something that was like oh i wish that there were like balls like in bridgeton you know like like that you could go to now like these days you know and someone was like there are you're just not invited to them and you wouldn't have been invited back then either you know like now we can like see that this is happening but like you're not going to be invited yeah which i i'm glad i don't want to be invited to that like i i that's not i don't No, there's something fake about the whole thing. Yeah, but it's a huge, obviously, industry. So one thing I did read, though, that I thought was actually kind of useful to know.

It was either NPR or This American Life or something about how a lot of, like, there's kind of like this understanding that if a black woman asks, like, another man, like, what they think about Beyonce, say they're not like trying to like figure out what their fandom is they're trying to like ascertain whether like you think successful black women are like bad or good so there is like it's become like a cultural touchstone in a way where it's like so like in that i'm pulling back on the whole like being anti-slegged because like that makes sense that's like a reasonable thing to like ask someone it's like hey like i want to know high football this one successful type of individual to make sure that like i'm not dealing with someone that is probably a shitty person

you know yeah yeah i think that's totally fair so in those cases you can be part of the beehive it's all good yeah which i look and you can also like you can go in and out of it you know like you can be excited about biance and also worried about the world you can be both you know sometimes it's a nice like sometimes it's a nice distraction it shouldn't be your life you know but like i enjoy some celebrity gossip every once in a while when you're a kid did you have like a celebrity you were in love with oh my god i had like a principal you imposter in my house in my bedroom. Seriously? Yeah. Wow.

I know. Yeah. But I mean, there was like a prince that was my age and he was cute. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's true. You know? And then obviously I've talked about Leonardo DiCaprio a lot. But like I'm exactly the right age for Titanic and Ruby and Juliet to have ruined my life. That's good point. My was Sylvester Stallone when I was a kid and watching him with like a giant gun and being just jacked and ripped and like doesn't give a fuck about anything. I was like, this guy's so cool. I want to be like him.

And you turned out exactly like him. I looked just like him. You were like a foot taller than him. The sad thing is, that's the difference. I look just like him except like now when he's like 82 years old. But whatever. It's fine. So yeah, that's all I got.

Interesting fun. But I thought it was an interesting topic. And unfortunately, there was like a million examples of people who've tried to or have killed people for this and it's really it's that's really scary I'd be like I remember one time like there's something but

where the Kardashian family like a guy got onto their property with a gun and the mom fired all of her security team and people were mad about it but I'm like yeah that's their fucking job to make sure that no one gets near property with a gun so they should all be fired you know

somebody ran into the White House while Obama was there and like got to front staircase like yeah that's very scary and and okay i forgot the reason why i even got on this topic the reason i got this topic was because some way somehow i like pull up some article about um this guy who twice broke into queen elizabeth's bedroom one time she wasn't there but the second time he apparently sat on the bed she sat up from being asleep and they started talking to each other i mean you have to because you're like what do i do and then eventually she I was able to push whatever security buttons she has.

But I was like, that's so scary. She should have cut off some heads for that. Well, yeah, one of the guys who was in charge of security offered to resign and they wouldn't let him. I was like, why? Yeah, no. He's lucky that he didn't get Tower of London. Yeah, no kidding. Because Jesus, that's scary.

Yeah, that's really scary. There's a lot of those examples, unfortunately. Yeah. And didn't they also get robbed in France or something? Like, it's like. The Kardashians did, yeah. Yeah What you want to do

Is you want to be like rich But like not famous That's the that's the dream scenario Where you can like Every now and then You're like hey you know what I know Chili's is Koso is garbage But it's kind of fun

I want to go to have Chili's Koso And nobody's going to look at me That's a dream Yeah that's true And you can like You can get as much fucking Koso As you want because you're rich Clean that place out

Koso for everyone Day's over everyone. So yeah, that's my story for this week. A little quick one for y'all, but hopefully it was fun. That was fun. Thank you. Taylor, do you have any... When we have a lot of fans.

Oh, my God. I know. We're doing all this, and we're going to be the story that our future selves tell. Shit. I should have thought of that. It's like inception. Oh, my God. Are you Fars from...

I'm just trying to have queso, man. Can you just leave me alone? Okay, do you want some free caseo? Because I already bought one for every table. I'll buy you two if you want. This story really comes together. Cool. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, please let us know if you have any ideas for the topic for the future. And I have one more medieval topic. And then our friend Kiara just sent me a good one for one's history month. So thank you, Kiara. I will look into that one. And I'm excited for that. I got a really big women's suffrage flag.

It's huge. It's like three by five. And it's like it's yellow, white, purple. And I'm going to put it outside my house in March. Very excited about it. Yellow, white, purple? Yeah, like, that was like the colors that the women wore when they were like marching for voting rights.

I did not know there was a flag for that. I got a watch of flags from flags for good. So I got that one and I got like the gay pride flag for, Pride Month, and right now I have a California flag, but it's black for resistance. Is that what that means? Is it like a, does it have a Jolly Roger on it? Oh,

that's kind of a cool flag. Yeah. It kind of looks like the Indian flag. Actually, you know what? I really don't know what the Indian flag color is. No mind. Fun. Well, yeah, it is. Oh, it's just three stripes.

Anyway. I would also like to ask anyone who would care to write in, to write, to us at do an NFL pod at gmail.com and find us on the social at do an NFL pod. Taylor has been unbelievably busy

clipping, slicing, dicing, and doing fun and things on TikTok that I don't know how to do. So thank you. Thank you to everyone

who's been chatting with me on there. That's been fun. Sweet. Anything else to sign off with Taylor? Yes. I put this on oh my God.

Blue sky. I don't know. We have so many things. but I was doing the TikTok about the episode about Ed and Lorraine Warren and talking about remember when I hit that owl listening to listen to the book about them coming home from dinner with you in Palm Springs so I hit that owl that owl was fine but I was like oh my God I summoned a demon and then I finished doing that and then I went to my email and my learned league started again like the trivia league and Ed and Lorraine Warren were one of the questions no way

is that spooky that's kind of fun though Yes, I got that one correct. It's like the one thing we intrinsically know. I'm number nine in my league right now, which is absolutely insane. I am really proud of myself, and I'm sure I'm going to go back down to the bottom soon. It's out of like 26. I'm usually like 23, but I've had a good run this past week. So hold on, real quick.

Can you just remind me, is this a one person team? Yeah, it's like me. I answer five questions every day against someone else, and I have to wait the questions and like what points they get. So, like, if I think a question is going to be really easy, I'll wait at zero. So even if they get right, like, at zero points, you know. Man, I should try to be a part of this. Can I be a part of this?

Yeah, I think I have some invites or invite season will open and I'll invite you. Okay. I would like an invitation. That sounds fun. It is very fun. I actually put our podcast in the member resources section of the website. I can do whatever I want to do. Yeah, you, the creativity here of all the ways.

You sure warned us. Thank you. Thank you. If you found us from there, let me know. I don't think that anyone has that. You know. Cool. Thank you.

That's all I got. Cool. Well, we'll go ahead and shut things off.