Celebrity worship syndrome: why we follow the famous and ignore the brilliant

Name three Kardashians. Easy. Now name a Nobel laureate from the past five years. Most of us stall. Irvan Damon argues this gap is no harmless quirk. Our brains are wired for faces, not formulas. Algorithms reward spectacle over substance. The result is misplaced attention, the real capital of a knowledge economy. It shapes what gets funded, who gets promoted and what the next generation values. Damon's fix starts closer to home than you might think.

By Irvan Damon

Most of us can recall the names of three Kardashians, but most couldn’t name a single Nobel Prize winner from the last five years, bar perhaps the most recently announced winner, thanks to some president’s politicking campaign in pursuit of the 2025 prize. This realisation hit me during a conversation with a colleague who casually mentioned a breakthrough in agentic AI creation and how chat bots are mostly dead - a discovery that could reshape entire industries. My partner nodded politely, having no idea what she was talking about. Yet, that same week, she spent twenty minutes reading theories about what a celebrity’s choice of a bottled water brand, “says about them”.

The asymmetry was embarrassing. And I’m not alone, as you reflect on this weekend, on how you spent more time than you should have on the celebrity section of the your favourite Sunday paper.

In today’s culture, the fascination with celebrities often borders on obsession, while Nobel laureates, poets, courageous activists, and other intellectuals remain largely overlooked – dare I say, these intellectual, purpose-driven rock stars are instead obfuscated by the coverage of a retired, tattooed soccer celebrity tending, and trending to his sheep on his newlyacquired farm.

Studies suggest that 3-5% of celebrity-obsessed fans exhibit pathological behaviours like stalking or extreme parasocial attachment. Meanwhile, society undervalues the thinkers whose work actually drives progress underscored by astonishing global achievements. As one Reddit user astutely observed: “We’re drawn to smiles and catchphrases—not equations or sonnets”.

This isn’t just about tabloid culture or social mass media addiction. It’s about something inherent – a fundamental mismatch between what captures our attention and what merits it. What might be called “celebrity worship syndrome” reveals our instinctive attraction to glamour, relatability and spectacle over the more deep, the highly profound and artistic brilliance. The question is: why?

Our brains aren’t wired for arithmetic and linear equations. We’re mostly wired for face Evolutionarily speaking, humans survived by reading social cues, tracking who held power and building relationships within tribes. Celebrities activate these ancient circuits with precision, supported by their band of managers. They’re beautiful. Charismatic. Captivating. Emotionally available through curated, filtered glimpses into their lives – by the bottled water they so fondly adore. We feel like we know them. A magical kinship. This degree of intimacy – even if manufactured and synthesised – triggers the same neural pathways as genuine social connection innately wired.

Intellectuals, my preferred circle of influence, by contrast, offer abstractions. Mostly heuristic. Their work mostly exists in papers, theories, formulas – domains that require effort to penetrate – too much endeavour. A physicist explaining string theory doesn’t give us the dopamine hit of watching someone charm a talk show audience. The cognitive load is different

The reward is delayed.
Media amplifies this disparity ruthlessly. Celebrities are designed for consumption. Photogenic. Quotable. #able. Endlessly reproducible across platforms. These narratives are simplistically linear: rise, fall, redemption, scandal. Repeat. We don’t need context to engage. A Nobel laureate’s work, however transformative, doesn’t translate well into a fifteen-second video or soundbite. It doesn’t trend. It doesn’t generate the algorithmic momentum that feeds our feeds. It is not #able.

Oh, then there’s relatability. Celebrities sell aspiration wrapped in accessibility. They post selfies. Share struggles. Make mistakes publicly. We see ourselves in them – or rather, we see who we might become with better genes, more money, a publicist, a stylist and all the free bling and swag. Intellectuals, brilliant as they are, often inhabit realms that feel distant. Closeted. Their genius can seem intimidating rather than inspiring. We admire them in theory. We follow celebrities in practice

The Cost of Misplaced Attention

But here’s where this becomes more than a cultural curiosity – it beckons a strategic and deliberate obstruction. When we systematically overlook the people solving humanity’s most daunting fears and challenges, we misallocate our collective attention. And attention, in a knowledge economy, is capital. It is the currency. We invest it in spectacle while underfunding curiosity. We celebrate personalities while ignoring the ideas that could reshape industry, flip autocratic regime change, cure diseases, or reimagine how we live, or suffer.

Consider the innovators working on climate technology, the researchers decoding genetic diseases, the economists modelling systemic risk. Their work has exponential impact. Yet they operate in relative obscurity while influencers with marginal contributions command outsized cultural real estate, with free food and bling. The imbalance isn’t just unfair – it’s inefficient

In business, we understand that what gets measured gets managed. What gets attention begets resources. If our attention economy systematically rewards image over substance, we create perverse incentives. And we love it! The smartest minds might be discouraged from pursuing unglamorous but essential pursuits. The next generation learns that fame is more valuable than expertise. Innovation and purpose, a footnote to image.

This matters for leaders trying to build cultures of excellence. If your organisation mirrors society’s celebrity-worship instincts, you’ll potentially promote the charismatic over the competent. Or perhaps you are blessed enough to have both in your organisation. The articulate over the analytical. The visible over the valuable. You’ll optimise for performance – the theatrical kind – rather than performance that moves metrics.

Rewiring Recognition

Perhaps the most uncomfortable truth is this: we’ve built systems that make celebrity worship rational. Normalised. #able. Social media algorithms don’t reward depth. They reward engagement. A provocative celebrity post generates more interaction than a thoughtful academic paper or a humane endeavour. Media outlets don’t cover breakthroughs unless they can dramatise them. Educational systems don’t teach us how to evaluate intellectual contribution – sadly, we learn to recognise the brand, not brilliance

Changing this requires more than individual willpower. It requires structural shifts in how we design platforms, fund research, and define success. But it also requires personal discipline – a willingness to curate our attention deliberately, rather than letting it be captured by what’s loudest, or dumbest.

For instance. When working with content creators, one should be asking: what am I amplifying? Are you adding to the noise and clickbait, or are you creating positive signal? It’s humbling to realise how easily we default to what’s easy, what’s entertaining, what’s immediately gratifying. A bottle of shiny water.

The intellectuals, poets, authors and activists we overlook aren’t asking for red carpets. But perhaps they deserve recognition proportional to their contribution. Not just for their sake – for ours. Because the problems we face as a society, as an economy, as a species, won’t be solved by people who are good at being famous. Well, maybe Musk, in part. They’ll be solved by people who are good at being right. Purposefully right.

A Different kind of genius

Celebrity worship syndrome isn’t inherently pathological. Our attraction to charisma, to story, to human connection – these are features, not bugs. The problem isn’t that we love celebrities. It’s that we’ve let that love crowd out everything else.

What if we applied the same energy we give to tracking celebrity lives to following innovative breakthroughs and encounters? What if we made intellectuals and the invisible crusaders with a cause accessible as influencers – not by dumbing down their work, but by investing in translating it? What if genius got the same production budget as gossip?

The fascinating thing about attention is that it’s trainable. Just as a palate can be refined to detect subtle flavours or the nose to detect complex aromas, our appreciation can be cultivated to recognise meaningful forms of excellence. It requires intention. Curiosity. A willingness to engage with ideas that don’t offer instant gratification

In a world optimised for virality, perhaps the most radical act is this: choosing substance over spectacle. Not because spectacle is wrong, but because substance is essential. The smile is lovely. The eyes, they sparkle. The bottled water, it must be endorsed. But the equation and silent ambition might save us. We call people who chase celebrities, obsessed. But ignoring the people solving our immense quandaries? This, might be the real pathology. And, off I go to indulge in my precious rag.

In a world optimised for virality, perhaps the most radical act is this: choosing substance over spectacle. Not because spectacle is wrong, but because substance is essential. The smile is lovely. The eyes, they sparkle. The bottled water, it must be endorsed. But the equation and silent ambition might save us. We call people who chase celebrities obsessed. But ignoring the people solving our immense quandaries? This might be the real pathology. And off I go to indulge in my precious rag.