What is the basis of the growing preoccupation with the cult of
celebrity?  Yes, celebritity-following has long been popular; movie
fan magazines proliferated in the '30s and '40s.  But our pop culture
is now fixated on the most trivial actvities of a growing, evolving
clan of personalities, many with no discernable entertainment talent,
intellect or contributions to society.  My contention:  Celebrity
worship is in part a response to the average person's sense anonymity
-- of being a nobody lost in a milling crowd.  People seek to escape
this numbing feeling that they are wandering through life unknown and
unacknowledged by seeking to relate to the "perceved glamour" of
celebrities.  They seek a pathetic substiute for recognition by
exalting and adoring the recognized.  Celebrity worship is mindless
escapism based on a sense of personal insignificance.  It fact,
carried to extremes, celebrity worship is a vicious cycle -- only
deepening the feelings of personal insignificance and worthlessness. 
I contend that obsession with celebrity is not healthy.

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Clarification of Question by agate-ga on 30 Mar 2006 05:26 PST

What is the basis of the growing preoccupation with the cult of
celebrity?  Yes, celebrity-following has long been popular; movie
fan magazines proliferated in the '30s and '40s.  But our pop culture
is now fixated on the most trivial actvities of a growing, evolving
clan of personalities, many with no discernable entertainment talent,
intellect or contributions to society.  My contention:  Celebrity
worship is in part a response to the average person's sense of anonymity
-- of being a nobody lost in a milling throng of nobodies.  People seek to escape
the sense that they are unknown and
unacknowledged by seeking to relate to the "perceved glamour" of
celebrities.  They seek a pathetic substiute for recognition by
exalting and adoring the recognized.  Celebrity worship is mindless
escapism based on a sense of personal insignificance.  It fact,
carried to extremes, celebrity worship is a vicious cycle -- only
deepening the feelings of personal irrelavance and worthlessness. 
I contend that obsession with celebrity is not healthy.

Agate,
A problem with your question is that you obviously want information
that supports your thesis.  This makes it difficult for Researchers to
answer if the information that they can find does do so.  Indeed, they
may shy away from even trying, based perhaps on experience with other
questioners of similarly expressed questions who were unsatisfied with
the attempts to answer their questions.

That said, and since this is just a free comment, I would venture to
say that the expanded media coverage of the pop culture (TV stations
dedicated to pop, etc.) feeds the interest in such celebrities, and
does so for monetary interests, those of the media and those of the
so-called celebrities.  The media can "make" celebrities" by just
keeping his and her name in the public eye, and they help by doing
foolish things.

Forty odd years ago, pop figures were just as idolized as they are
today (Beatles, et al.), but then there were only the mainline media
available, so only a few of them got coverage.

Yes, some people go of the deep end, but I don't expect that celebrity
worship is causing more people to suffer from lack of personal esteem.
 Maybe the media  - the same media -  are making a story out of what
they have created.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,186659,00.html

(This wasn't the source of my comment, but rather tempered my
questioning of your thesis.)

Here is an older UK article  - note the date:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3147343.stm

Regards, Myoarin