Pop culture permeates almost everything we do nowadays. If we're not off the grid completely, most of us know a thing or two about celebrities. Also, we make memes about them; sometimes making fun of them, other times admiring them.
This time, we've compiled a collection of memes for pop culture enthusiasts. For those who might get the joke about Leonardo DiCaprio dating younger women, "The Rock" playing the same character in every movie, and Taylor Swift being an avid aviation fan. So scroll down and check out some memes about these pop culture icons below!
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We see famous people almost every day: on social media, in the news and on the big screen, we listen to their music and know about their lives perhaps more than we ought to. We only know their public personas, of course, not the real people behind them, but we still form opinions based on them.
In this age of social media, it's particularly easy to think that you know a famous person if you follow their daily life. Celebrities have never been closer to us; that is, we've never felt closer to them than before. Like Liam Gallagher coming onto Twitter now and again to answer some silly questions and generally shoot the breeze with his fans.
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Some celebrities become more relatable to us on social media and that's a phenomenon that wasn't really prominent some around years ago. Samantha Brooks, a postdoctoral researcher at King's College London, told Yahoo! that before, we would only see a rare interview with our favorite celebrity here and there.
"Now many public figures post openly about their personal lives, their thoughts, feelings, opinions, their day-to-day lives, etc. on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. They're a lot more 'accessible,'" Brooks explained. Professor of Cultural Sociology at London's City University Chris Rojek told the BBC that, back in the day, celebrities like Marlon Brando were almost gods.
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"People may now think Beyoncé is a god but she is much nearer to us than 30 or 40 years ago... We're drowning in media access to celebrities," Professor Rojek explained. Many experts agree, saying that we're starting to feel fatigued when it comes to celebrities: too much, too many, and too everywhere.
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But why do we put famous people on such a pedestal? Why do we idolize them in the first place? One reason is quite innocuous: it just takes our minds off of daily stress and problems. It's a form of escapism; idolizing someone who has a glamorous life takes us away from our own routine, which we might view as dull and uninteresting.
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However, other reasons can be problematic. Samantha Brooks suggests we might idolize famous people because we aspire to be like them or are looking for a gap in our lives to fill. "[They have] attributes we feel are lacking in our own life, or it might be that forming an attachment to a celebrity — even a parasocial, unreciprocated one — can be a kind of compensation for lacking real-life relationships, real intimacy, real attachments, to people in our own lives."
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However, there's been a shift in how we perceive celebrities lately. People are becoming more and more skeptical about how relatable celebrities can actually be, calling them out on social media for their privileges and refusing to participate in celebrity worship culture. The turning point for this was possibly the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.
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People all over the world deemed the now-infamous "Imagine" video where celebrities banded together to sing the John Lennon classic as cringeworthy and incredibly tone-deaf. Instead of showing people that "We're all in this together," the stint exposed a different kind of reality. While some people had to scramble to survive, celebrities were living in their gated communities and comfortable mansions.
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"That was the government message: that rich and poor alike, we're all at risk. Well, we're not," Professor Rojek explained. "You look at these celebrities and they're all clearly in [compound-style houses]. They've got walls all around them and they're living in the lap of luxury. So for them to reach out and say 'I understand your pain' is a bit fanciful."
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With some famous people, we might start feeling celebrity fatigue. Liza Anderson, Hollywood publicist and founder of Anderson Group Public Relations, explained to Yahoo! that the rule 'All press is good press' isn't necessarily true. "There has to be a balance," she said. "You want to make sure they're connected to their audience and they're connected to their fans, but not so much where the fans are rolling their eyes every time they hear their name."
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Maintaining some mystery is a way celebrities can avoid that. Experts say that famous people like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, and Beyonce are good examples of a balanced media presence.
"She doesn't take pictures with people. She doesn't do press," Anderson said of Beyonce. "You don't really know anything about her, she's very private. People want more, and they don't get enough, so when she does a big feature in a magazine, people are glad to see her."
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