Ghanaian Celebrities: Do They Really Understand What this is All About?

I wouldn’t waste your time explaining to you who a celebrity is, because in our part of the world, anyone who appears on TV is placed into the shinning star box of celebrities. Even at the international front, being a celebrity today does not have any sort of real correlation with ‘to celebrate’.

But one thing both the deserving and worthy celebrity title holders in the West have in common is; they understand what being a celebrity is about—at least most of them do. It is about fame, it is about trading a huge percent of your privacy for silly things like red carpet appearances and turning yourself into a news punching bag so that the blogs, the tabloids and the newspapers can attack you from all angles. The Court even accepts this—to some greater extent.

The reality of life is that, you do not gain anything without having to give away something and the Western celebrities perfectly understand and embrace this.

The whole celebrity lifestyle and pop culture is alien to us but we love the West more than ourselves, so we’ve all bought into it, and since we even copy things of less substance from the West, this seems far better in value to be copied.

However, our celebrities and those who desperately want to wear the celebrity crown do not understand the relationship between a celebrity, the fans and the media. They want to become celebrities—in fact they believe they are but have no clue what the lifestyle entails.

I wouldn’t want to say they are ignorant because that does not capture it all, some are plainly stupid without any understanding of what part of their lifestyles people are keenly interested in…

No one really cares about Jackie Appiah’s Charity works, though we may pay occasional attention to that. Unfortunately, we are more interested in who she is ‘chopping down’ at night than which church she attends on Sundays.

In the world of celebrities, the only valuable news to the media and even the fans centre on what these celebrities do not want the public to know. There has always been an increasing tension of hide and seek between celebrities and the media and it will forever remain this way.

Can you imagine how far the kick-boxing between Solanage and Jay-Z travelled? My mother who does not even know who the heck Solange is had the ‘beat down’ footage on her phone. I am sure Solange does a lot of charity work and good things in this world but the media and even the real fans do not really care. Nothing Solange has done under the sun has gotten such attention before…

Anyone who follows celebrities has an unquenchable taste for gossip and the Western celebrities know this, so they work hard each day to camp the negative elements behind the walls—but trust the blogs and the tabloids to know where to dig for the nasty and shocking gossip.

I wouldn’t buy a tabloid newspaper or visit a celebrity blog if I am not looking to read some good gossip and feed my taste for negative news.

Let Beyonce wear the greatest outfit and she will be placed at some little corner with tiny font of words on top of the picture but let her make a mistake and show her boobies on a red carpet—and she will be hugely plastered on front pages with all manner of words written in thick fonts. That is what the celebrity culture is all about; no one really gives a damn about you when you are rising or when you are being good but we care so much when you are going down the drain.

Ironically, celebrities want the media and fans to know about their good deeds. But when the bad hits them, they hate the same media and fans when they dedicate a whole year gossiping and giggling about it.

Let me bring this to our own backyard. We were all here when the relationship between Nadia Buari and Jim Iyke was pushed down our throats with several instagram photos of the two, being mostly shared by them. They wanted us all to know they were dating and whenever they did something great together, they will call the bloggers and journalists to have these things reported. But when rumours of their inevitable break-up dropped, they got upset that we decided to talk about it.

Menaye Donkor subtly called people who discuss other people’s business (she meant those discussing her marriage) shallow this week with an instagram photo she shared—all because people are talking about her alleged break-up with Sulley Muntari. When the image she shared was brought to my attention, I said; ‘oh so now the fans and the writers who have decided to talk about your rumoured relationship break-up are shallow minded’ yet, when it was all flourishing, you and your PR consistently sent us photos and all manner of stories about you and your relationship with Sulley for publication/discussion.

The hard truth is that, it SUCKS to be a celebrity—and only a few cares about what you are doing right with majority of the people being interested in the gossip and what you are doing wrong. It has always been this way and it will forever be this way.

No one cares about what they already know (they have that), what they are interested in is what they do not have/know (what is being hidden from them). I wouldn’t be much interested if you bring something out of your pocket to show me. But I would definitely want to know what is in your pocket if it looks puffy and you seem to be covering it up.

The celebrity lifestyle is all about the two Gs-Glamour & Gossip—nothing more is of any significance to the night-watchers who are on alert to report and the fans/haters who are waiting to read or hear.

I wouldn’t run a celebrity blog if I do not have a ‘sweet ear’ for good gossip. And you wouldn’t be here either if you are not looking for the gossip.

It may interest you to know that, behind closed doors—I do hold long conversations with many of these celebrities. They love the gossip and will go on and on about it when it is not about them—especially when it is about someone they do not really like.

But the moment they become the subjects of interest, they begin to act as if, they hate gossip and put up this sort of contempt posture towards those devouring the gossip and adding to it.

I understand it if a celebrity puts on a ‘defensive armour’ when he or she hits the gossip headlines in an attempt to protect his or her interest. But when the person makes it as if those dissecting the gossip are purely evil and wrong, then it is an indication that, such a person has no understanding of what the core of the celebrity lifestyle is about…

As an Editor, I can tell you that an interesting and ‘meaningful’ article on GhanaCelebrities.Com will normally get about 150,000 views in a week while a good gossip will receive about 500,000 views in a week. Now tell me, who are those doing the viewing? Some ghosts from ‘Awudome’ cemetery…right? Since I do not want to read about ‘Conspiracy Theories’, I do not visit AboveTopSecret and Vigilant Citizen…

Celebrity scandals sell and that is what people want to read so if you don’t still get the game as a Ghanaian celebrity, give the crown to someone else and go out there to become a school teacher—stay out of the media for good and we will never bother you. After all, I have not seen anyone talking about my cousin’s husband who cheated on her, leading to a divorce. While at it, close down those instagram, twitter and facebook pages and stop posting your life photos.

Celebrities do not dictate what people should discuss or have interest in when it comes to their persons—they only wish they can. The best they can do is to try and hide the skeletons. But with time, we still get to hear the good gossip…

We love and have supported Menaye Donkor and several of the other celebrities from day—and we will continue to do this. But when the gossip drops, we will dig deeper into it too since we all have ‘sweet ears’…If you want us to discuss you when you are doing good (looking beautiful at the parties, red carpet appearances and on holidays) and call yourself a celebrity, you should also allow us to discuss you when it gets dark in your world.

‘If you love for yourself’ some good celebrity gossip, just shout AMEN!