Putting on "masks": do you sympathise with celebri

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Alla
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26 Dec 2011, 10:39 pm

It is well known that aspies need to put on "masks" in order to appear normal in a world of NTs. Actors and other celebrities need to put on similar masks in order to preserve their image or a sort of illusion.

My question is: do you sympathise with these celebrities? From what I can gather from biographies and interviews, most celebrities (especially those who are dead or very old) have had unhappy lives. Is this due to the demands of fame and preserving their image, which, as aspies would know, is not a very easy thing to do?

I have found that most NTs dont understand the reasons behind a celebrity's unhappiness.



Diabolikal
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26 Dec 2011, 11:06 pm

All I know is that people I have reason to believe are NT love to make fun of idols that they make, and that it's justified as being as fun as watching a train wreck and that the celebrities bring it on themselves. That's all I know, keeping neutral.



dianthus
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26 Dec 2011, 11:24 pm

Yes I feel for them. They have to be careful about every little thing they say and do. The entertainment industry is cutthroat and if they make one wrong move, they lose their career. Journalists will twist around the things they say to make it sound wrong, or manipulate them into saying damning things. Some celebrities are under mind control and the lives they live are truly not their own.

All the same I think a lot of celebrities are drawn into that world, or unable to leave it, because they have huge egos and a desire for power and control over other people. They are expert public manipulators and they are used by intelligence agencies for that purpose.



RoDanGray
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26 Dec 2011, 11:45 pm

Not even a little bit. I put on a "mask" to function in the workplace. Celebs on the other hand, put on "masks" even though they already can function in the real world, they do it for gobs of money. Even if they slip & lose their career they can at least function amongst people, talk it up, get regular jobs with little to no effort on the social side. In other words, they didn't need to put on a mask, they wanted to. I must put on a mask.

No Mercy.



SylviaLynn
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26 Dec 2011, 11:55 pm

All people wear masks to disguise their true selves. Some wear multiple masks. Way too many forget they're wearing a mask and start to believe their own illusion.


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VIDEODROME
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27 Dec 2011, 12:21 am

It's hard to say. I mean who is more likely to have drama in their life then actors?

Still even if someone is foolish I don't think they need to be mocked for their poor decisions.



DreamSofa
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27 Dec 2011, 5:16 am

No sympathy at all.

First, celebrities choose to put on a mask. Those of us on the spectrum weren't given a choice to be born this way. Putting on a mask takes a lot of cognitive resources and is a survival mechanism.

Second, they make shedloads of money and are fawned over and spoiled for pretending to be something they're not.

If they don't like it, they can choose another profession and take public transportation and buy their own clothes and live on a normal salary, just like the rest of us.



Cash__
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27 Dec 2011, 9:20 am

I have no sympathy for celebrities. It's a completely different scenario. They choose their profession and they can unchoose it tommorrow and slip away into oblivion.



Asp-Z
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27 Dec 2011, 9:27 am

Diabolikal wrote:
NT love to make fun of idols that they make, and that it's justified as being as fun as watching a train wreck and that the celebrities bring it on themselves.


Yep. Essentially the celebrity orientated media is a massive industry which thrives purely on schadenfreude, every day finding a new way to ridicule people because our society sees it as justified because they're famous. This is nothing new, of course - historically humans have always had an outlet for this behaviour, it's why Romans watched gladiators fighting tigers and it's why we used to burn people we thought were witches - it just shows that we haven't actually evolved at all since those days, we're still the same species.

I, of course, do not participate in this: I despise all people equally.



1000Knives
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27 Dec 2011, 10:14 am

I do for the most part. Obviously some celebrities are basically dumb, and unlikeable people, but there's others who I'd probably like.

I have a feeling, to be really talented at something, you usually end up at least somewhat eccentric, at least that's what I've seen from meeting people talented in their work. So for me, some celebrities are easy to sympathize with, as they might be actual knowledgeable eccentric people like myself, just they took a different path than me or ended up with sorta "different cards." And sometimes, getting to where they're at takes lots of hard work, more hard work than most people could imagine, basically it's a big gamble. IE, one of my favorite Japanese pop groups, Perfume, their first concert literally had like 5 people show up, they went from that to being one of the most popular well known groups in Japan right now. The girls from Perfume don't seem "normal" by a long shot, either.

So yes, I can usually sympathize with celebrities. Sometimes they're just dumb and lucky, though.