Column: Celeb Overload

Brangelina are breaking up, according to the New York Daily News at 10:34 p.m. on Saturday. Two hours later, Perez Hilton implores that we don't believe the rumors. "Brangelina forever!" he exclaims.

Meanwhile, Nick Lachey is broke, Jamie Foxx thinks he should be the newest judge on American Idol and Bristol Palin has decided to become a born-again virgin, all according to Hilton.

I think it's fair to say that our culture is celebrity obsessed. Or at the very least, a significant segment of the population is. According to Alexa, a company that compiles Internet traffic data and statistics, more Americans visit TMZ than the Washington Post's Web site.

We have a problem.

Our obsession with celebrity gossip - I'm going to intentionally avoid using the term "news" - has many implications. Most obviously, it takes our attention away from truly important events and problems in the world. There's only so much time in a person's day to keep up with the news. If that time is spent reading about Heidi Montag's recent round of plastic surgeries instead of the implications of this month's earthquake in Haiti, our society's sense of world politics, the economy and everything else that actually affects our lives is going to continue to go down the drain.

In addition, the intensity of celebrity gossip and the persistence of the paparazzi have redefined the implications of being a celebrity. If you want to be an actor, a singer, a politician or a star athlete in this century, you better be prepared to have every part of your live scrutinized by bloggers, the American public and sometimes even so-called credible news outlets. If you aspire to be any of these things, delete your Facebook account now.

But I think there's a less obvious and equally, if not more serious, implication of our culture's obsession with celebrity gossip: It's all about the drama, and therefore, so are we. Celebrity gossip encourages us to give in to our natural inclination to love drama. It redefines our concept of newsworthy, equating relevance with salaciousness.

But these aren't the dramatic, heart-wrenching stories of a soldier going to fight in Iraq or a young child separated from his parents in the aftermath of a tragic earthquake. No, those dramas would make us think too hard about the struggles of people around the world. Instead, we focus on the personal struggles of a class of people who already have pretty much everything anyway: celebrities. We focus on the drug addictions, relationship problems and financial woes of people who can make a few thousand dollars just by showing up at a nightclub.

And because we truly believe the struggles of the rich and famous are relevant, and because we truly believe we should have access to people's personal lives, we approach our interpersonal relationships with similar suppositions. Except for us, our celebrities are our friends, family members and colleagues.

We think we have a right to know everything about them whether they agree with it or not. We talk about each other, with little regard for the truth and whether what we're saying is truly a critique or just malicious gossip.

We also think our own problems are newsworthy, even when they aren't. Even when we shouldn't be getting involved in each others' problems or involving others in ours, we do. Is it a coincidence that in the celebrity gossip world, these things are the norm? Worse yet, just like the tabloids, we try to create drama when it isn't there. We assume, or sometimes imagine, a person's intent, and then run with it.

Just like Perez.

Even though much of it is unfounded, the pseudo-drama we create can have devastating effects on the people unlucky enough to be the targets. Sometimes, these pseudo-dramas can be more hurtful than the truth.

My advice? Be wise to the ways of the drama kings and queens. They're all around, and they can and will hurt you. The person sitting next to you right now might be your Perez Hilton, your TMZ, your New York Post Page Six. Even your best friends can fall into the trap. The celebrity-obsessed culture in which we've grown up has primed them for it. Stop reading the gossip pages, and you might find that you'll stop treating other people's lives like a story from yours.