How fake can the lives of celebrities be? Things that you are shown on social media, how true are they? Paid social media trends, paid posts, paid paparazzi, paid podcasts—these are used to create hype for films. The box office collections you are told about contain many lies and frauds.
Hello friends!
Have you ever noticed that these Bollywood actors and celebrities, whenever and wherever they go, a crowd of paparazzi always follows them with their cameras in their hands? Whether they are going to the airport at 3 PM to catch a flight, or whether they leave the gym in the afternoon after a workout session, someone or the other is always there to click their photos. If they go to a market to shop, coincidentally, the paparazzi follow them there too. And if they start traveling in an autorickshaw instead of a car for some reason, it becomes a news headline. It’s quite strange.
I travel in Delhi metro and auto rickshaws too, but no newspaper has ever printed such a headline for me. And neither have I ever seen a paparazzi in my life. But it’s not just about me. You won’t see this happening for most YouTubers. And there are some immensely popular Bollywood actors with whom this rarely happens. What a coincidence!
On the other hand, some relatively unknown people's faces are shown to us repeatedly by the paparazzi. On social media and in newspapers. To the extent where this makes them famous. Or, it’d be better to say that they are turned famous.
Friends, in this video, let’s understand this glamorous world of celebrities, how real it is, and how fake.
Today, the word 'Paparazzi' is used for those people whose job is to click photos of celebrities and high-profile people. In India, they are these people. 'Paparazzi' is a plural word. The singular form is 'Paparazzo.' And it’s quite interesting to know how it originated.
In an Italian film released called *La Dolce Vita*, a side character in this film was called Paparazzo. He was an annoying but fearless reporter who was ready to go to any extent to click photos of celebrities. The film’s director revealed in his autobiography the reason he chose the word 'Paparazzo.' Because it is an Italian slang which refers to a big, annoying mosquito. He said that this was the right word to depict the reporter's personality. Just like a mosquito flies around your ears, biting you and annoying you, the news reporter was like that.
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And now let's get back to the topic.
In the Time magazine, a feature article was written on paparazzi, which made the word 'Paparazzi' even more popular. In that article, the paparazzi were called a pack of hungry wolves. There was a simple reason behind this. In those days, this was what the paparazzi culture was known for. Secretly taking photos of celebrities without their permission, without caring for their privacy. Following celebrities everywhere to get photos.
In the infamous car accident of Princess Diana in which she passed away, the news was spread all over the world. A big reason for this was revealed to be the paparazzi. That night, the paparazzi's cars were shamelessly following her car. In order to escape them, the driver sped up the car and this led to the car crashing into a pillar while entering the tunnel. Due to this single incident, the world started questioning the ethical boundaries of the paparazzi.
But in India, during the 90s, the paparazzi culture was just beginning. After the economic liberalization of 1991, along with international brands, tabloid culture came to India. Magazines like Stardust, Midday, Bombay Times, and Page 3 started becoming popular. Yogen Shah is known as India’s first paparazzo and back when there was no internet and social media, the business model of these paparazzi was very simple. Take candid photos of popular celebrities that no one has seen before. And sell these photos to magazines and tabloids. People were very interested in this because in the absence of social media there were not many chances to get a glimpse of celebrities' lives. The general public was curious to know. How did these celebrities live their lives? How do their homes look? What do they do in their personal time? This is why this culture became popular.
But today, after the advent of social media, the whole system has turned upside down. Now, for the paparazzi, directly taking money from celebrities to click their 'candid' photos has become a new model. I am not kidding, many paparazzi openly admit this.
"Smaller stars do call you, right?"
"See smaller stars..."
"They send messages on media groups."
"They're even ready to pay and they request us to shoot their pics."
"Give us some names."
"Everybody who's new. Even everybody who's made it also, will always start off, right?"
"The paparazzi thing is commercialized now. In a very big way."
Now, two different types of models have evolved here. One, the so-called celebrities who want publicity and pay paparazzi for their PR and publicity. And the second is the top A-list real celebrities who don't need publicity. Who would never want to pay for to have their photos taken, but the public would still want to see their photos to see their private candid photos, so the paparazzi secretly click their photos. In the second category, there are people like Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, and Virat Kohli.
But the question here is, the numerous photos of celebrities you see or social media and in newspapers, how many are authentic? And how many are paid PR photos?
In an interview, Manav Manglani said that this ratio is around 10%. But in my opinion, the ratio is actually 5% of the things you see on social media, on TV, or in newspapers, about these celebrities, are paid promotions, and fake acting. And only 10% are authentic. Why am I saying this? You’ll understand this later in the video.
Think about it, in a celebrity’s life, how many things that you see publicly are paid promotion PR? And how many are authentic and real?
Secondly, notice when these celebrities appear on podcasts and interviews. 90% of celebrities appear on podcasts only when their movies are about to be released. And if we talk about those social media pages that regularly post about Bollywood and celebrities, it can be quite difficult for you to identify this there. But many of the posts are often PR and paid promotion. Sometimes, you can see clear proof of this.
For example, on the Instagram page 'Instant Bollywood', look at this year-old post. What is its caption? "Hi, can you please use this picture and mention #DivyaKhoslaKumar? This is BTS of her recently released song #Designer." The caption that the celebrity asked them to write, was mistakenly copy-pasted here. Although, this post was later corrected. But this should tell you that most of the posts you see on social media, on such accounts, are PR.
How many times have you noticed that on Thursdays and Fridays, whenever a new movie is released in the cinema halls, the hashtag of that movie is trending on Twitter. If you click on that hashtag, you will see many tweets praising that movie. Like, look at these tweets. When the movie *Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani* was released. These were the 'reviews' of that movie. Tweeted by these accounts on Twitter. And notice how all of them use the same language. They use the same phrases. Because, the thing was that all these tweets were fake. These accounts were handled by a PR company. This doesn’t mean that the film wasn’t good or that it was a flop. When I watched the film, I genuinely enjoyed it. And I praised it publicly on Twitter, without any payments.
But there is a business of fake reviews on social media. For example, let’s look at this in detail. One of these accounts was this one, by the name Sapna. If you click on this account and look at its tweets, you will see that this account posted many tweets. On 4th June, this account was tweeting about #TheNarrativeOnTOI, promoting The Times of India. But just below that tweet, on 5th June, it promoted ABP News too. If you scroll down