How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Kristen Stewart, Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, Emily Vancamp, Rodrigo Santoro, Cristiano Ronaldo, Jenna Jameson and a panda. What do all of these figures have in common? Many of my, and probably your, Facebook friends believe these are their doppelgangers.
According to Urban Dictionary, a doppelganger is a "a ghostly double of a living person that haunts its living counterpart." Personally, I want to know whether my friends are haunting their celebrities or their celebrities are haunting them.
NYU received doppelganger week well, and aside from it being another Facebook fad, it raised a question in my mind about our fixation on celebrities, which seems to be a recurring theme.
Doppelganger week seems to be a reflection of our attitudes toward celebrity figures. It is a representation of how we can't escape the celebrity world, and how celebrities can't escape us.
Sometimes, living in New York City makes me feel like we're more starstruck than we would be if we were living somewhere else. We see celebrities frequently — New York, like Los Angeles, is a part of their world.
If you see Jude Law or Adam Sandler hanging around, you will probably tell your friends about it. Other times we want celebrities to get out of our world with their attitude. Lindsay Lohan should stop showing up at clubs with her army of bodyguards and friends — as if we actually wanted to party with that trainwreck.
To that end, take Lady Gaga's lyric, "I'll follow you until you love me. Papa-paparazzi," and remove yourself from the most obvious context. Instead, ask why you can't turn on the TV without hearing about Tiger Woods' affairs. Are our personal lives haunted with an oversaturation of celebrities, or does our insatiable curiosity haunt theirs?
Recently, I had some pseudo-celebrity experience interning for Justin Ross Lee, or JRL for short. My experience with him can help answer that question. He is known for his outrageous Facebook statuses and his propensity for creating buzz, so don't hesitate to friend him!
He playfully haunts celebrities like Star Jones and Ashley Olsen in various tabloids to gain recognition. This may be a genius approach. In order to become the target of the paparazzi, he must act as one of them. New York is JRL's test market and my observations indicate he's either loved or hated by those who watch him. I think this relationship mirrors the attitude people exhibit toward celebrities and their world in the first place.
Either the tabloids are a nuisance or a source of entertainment. They're annoying or fun. We love them or hate them. Celebrities are our doppelgangers ... or we are theirs.
