Who doesn’t love a good celeb spot? I still thrill to the memory of running into the late Alan Rickman at the Almeida Theatre bar. Paul Mescal once jogged past in the park in those tiny Gaelic football shorts (if he’s reading this, I would like to apologise for the guttural “Oi, Paul!” that emerged unbidden from my friend’s mouth). I’ve seen Alexa Chung drinking a cappuccino more times than I’ve seen my own friends.
Living in London is like having a constantly updated Who’s Who of local luvvies in your head – the only man about town I haven’t spotted is Bill Nighy, and that’s only because he seems to stick to the W1 and W2 postcodes.
You might imagine, then, that I’d welcome the presence of more eagle-eyed star chasers. WhatsApp groups like Celeb Spot London and its spin-off Celeb Spot London Official are part of a new breed of amateur paparazzi that relies on the public messaging in tip-offs – think covertly snapped photos and breathless posts about Harry Styles in Hampstead, Gemma Collins filming in Ikea and, er, all of Boyzone inexplicably assembled at Exmouth Market. As the motto of one group puts it: “No spot is too Z-list.”
These are not the grizzled paps of Heat magazine’s heyday: one of its founders is an accountant who was inspired to set it up after an Apprentice contestant drove past in a car. Similarly, the anonymous founder of Deauxmoi is “just a regular person off the street”, in their words. Their Instagram account – now on 2.1 million followers – cut its teeth on crowdsourced sightings and has spawned its own podcast (Deaux U), book (Anon Pls) and merch collection, which includes tracksuits, baseball caps and a card game where players win by creating “the most viral, salacious news headline” they can think of.
All of which is to say: us normies love banal celebrity gossip. We want to know what their coffee order is (oat or regular?), whether they’re humble enough to pick up their own dry cleaning (Nighy does, apparently), if they can parallel park under pressure and if they prefer cherry or watermelon ice-flavoured vapes. We like finding out if they tip their server or are capable of waiting patiently in line for a table like the rest of us.
But here’s the thing: I don’t think we should feed this insatiable demand for insider knowledge – or at least we certainly shouldn’t be taking pics.
I’m as guilty as anyone else of gobbling up the latest bit of scurrilousness from Deauxmoi and other well-established platforms like Popbitch, but there’s something about the user-generated celeb photo that makes me uncomfortable.
The line between superfan and stalker is becoming increasingly blurred
Read MoreIt’s usually positioned as a harmless bit of fun that spices up the wallet-draining drudgery of living in a city like London or New York: “Here we are,” every morsel of tittle tattle declares, “in the place where it all happens! That’s [insert name of big city], baby!” At least, the argument goes, this isn’t anything like the bad old days of paparazzi photographers trying to upskirt It Girls and models. Nobody’s getting splashed on the cover of a magazine with fat-shaming headlines about their cellulite or thighs.
Still, I’ve grown increasingly uneasy about the idea that anyone going about their daily life – A-lister or otherwise – can be surreptitiously photographed and have that image circulated among a thousand-strong WhatsApp group. An actor once told me that the constant sense of surveillance feels not entirely dissimilar to being stared at and whispered about at school.
I worry too that this sense that all of humanity is a constant source of online content and social clout can bleed into other aspects of our lives.
One of the saddest stories to emerge out of clubland in recent years was that of Michael Peacock – a 64-year-old retiree who was filmed dancing in hotpants at London club Fabric by another punter and was so thoroughly bodyshamed that he almost never went back. “I wonder how many times people have videoed me thinking, ‘Let’s film this freak’,” he told VICE at the time.
Of course, you can argue that this is the price celebrities pay for their fame – that they could have easily signed up for a less starry career, one that involves the limelight a little less.
There’s a certain charm to feeling like you’re the little guy bringing the glittering elite down to your level (celebs: they struggle with their shopping bags just like us!).
But while we might not know exactly what it’s like to walk a red carpet or attend the Oscars, most of us can imagine how weird it might feel to be photographed going about our daily business.
The next time you see Paul Mescal running around in shorts – hey, it is nearly spring after all – just put down the smartphone and let the man to jog on in peace.
Zing Tsjeng is a journalist, non-fiction author, and podcaster
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