I was thinking about celebrities this morning.

You know those people?

The ones that are so often in the spotlight that lots and lots of people think they know them and they dress like them and fix their hair like them and talk like them and hope to one day be them (or at least marry them)?

Yep...them.

I was trying to work out in my head why people form attachments to them considering that 99% of them aren't exceptional people.

Sure, they may be able to act or sing or dance or cook or something, but I find it hard to believe they can do those things better than anyone else ever in the whole wide world.

They're just famous for those things because of good marketing.

I came to the conclusion that we need to conduct an experiment.

Maybe it could be called a social experiment?

I'm not smart enough to work out all the details but here's what I'm proposing:

Phase one:

We take a regular, non-extraordinary, run-of-the-mill person.

We put their face in the newspapers and glossy magazines.

Not dressed up or photoshopped, but just sort of a mug shot type image.

We don't include an explanation of who they are or what they do to go along with the image

Just the picture.

Several times a month in different magazines and different newspapers.

Phase two:

We put random videos on the news of the person doing random, everyday things.

That's it.

No pomp.  No circumstance.  No name.  No details.

Just a person sweeping their floor on a 10 second news clip once or twice a week.

There should probably be a "Phase 3", but I'm not a professional social science test performer person.

At this point we just wait for something to happen.

I'm not sure what.

Just something.

I most likely didn't get great grades in science, because it seems as if there needs to be some sort of hypothesis or a control or something to make this seem more scientifically viable but what do you expect?

I'm just a photographer with too much time to think about things like celebrities and scientific formulas but not enough time to actually work out all the specifics.

So I'll just leave that there for you to think about.

Or not.

B

You can see the rest of this session here under "Baby M".