Building off the post i just reblogged talking about celebrities being forced to work, interact with, and perform off the clock being a workers rights issue. I think there needs to be a serious move in the way that we talk about and make fan media about Celebrities too.
Listen, i'm not a very authoritive minded person so I'm not about to make a list of rules for everyone else to have to follow, but follow me on this.
As an Ace person I have never before in my life expirienced sexual attraction to a person. So there are a lot of social dos donts that you learn in the awkward puberty phase that i just didn't get. I didn't learn how to act because i didn't go through the same growing pains that others did. But i think I'm starting to, kinda.
There's one person I've suddenly developed something for that also happens to be a celebrity. And when it comes to people thirsting over celeberities online. They sure as fuck do not know how to act.
So this is how I am approaching the situation, affording respect and dignity to the person involved, while also exploring this thing I've never experienced before. My crush is an actor so this will be relevant to that.)
I just do not post or make any content about the actual actor as a person.
Because, as previously discussed, celebrities are artists who make up fake personas to perform for the public. that is their job. Their performance is what they make for us. It isn't real. However their face and name do and should belong to them. We've seen with many incidents on this site and in it's related fandoms that real people have a problem with being widely sexualized. It's exploitative. I think there needs to be a very purposeful level of separation made between the characters and the people. There have already been moves in this direction, I like when artist develope a certain look for characters that is different from the actor. Different hair, more freckles, different colored eyes, more weight, glasses, features closer to a comic version or another media.
I do not follow collection or accounts that group and label things with the actual celebrity's name.
this is more of a petty thing but i just like to keep the lines in my interactions clear. I am not here to specifically sexualize the person and i like to keep that clear.
I do not discuss my attraction to the person themselves in a fandom.
I reserve all thirsting and related media consumption to be of the characters themselves never of the individual person. Because, and i can't stress this enough, i don't know that person and I have no right to discuss them sexually and publicly. Fandom is great, being kinda a pervert in fandom is great. But not about an actual person. They sell us a list of character personas. A literal roster of fantasies for us to choose from. That's the deal they agreed to. That's their job. And if I want to fuck around about some blorbo that doesn't really exist then that's fine. But i won't harass a real person. I just don't feel good about it.
I don't follow the person's personal life or listen to gossip/drama or interact with traditional paparazzi tabloid bullshit.
This is just a policy I have for all celebrities. I don't like that kind of behavior. I don't participate. My level of curiosity does go up a lot for the person I'm interested in. But I am not gonna let something as dumb as sexual attraction lead me to behave poorly. I do not entertain celebrity stalking. I do not act disappointed, possessive of, or jealous about them.
Now the big caveat of this is, all of these rules apply to the public, both that of the outside of home kind and the on the internet kind. I have actual friends in person that I can act a fool with. Because it is a private space and they'll keep me in line.