It's Jordan's Fault. Probably.

 In a recent Independent piece on online bullying, the mighty Graham Linehan pointed out that celebrities, by their very existence, are treated without empathy, and that the public views them as a commodity.
 He has a point, but the example he uses is a little too simple - he points out the unpleasant way Tom Daley was treated by that kid whose parents were brother and sister [probably.]
 Tom Daley isn't the reason celebrities don't get treated like real people; everyone who wasn't fisted by a succession of stepfathers* knows that Daley is a young, blameless swimmer. At the very least, he has a role that we can define.
 What Linehan touches on, but fails to explore, is why we as a public are used to seeing celebrities as objects.
 The truth, I suspect, is that a small minority have damned the entire celebrity culture.
 Once upon a time, in the days of yore, when instead of the internet we communicated mostly by pigeons and shouting, people were famous for a reason. Usually just the one reason, too. James Dean was famous for acting, and never once threatened to launch a second career recording awful music and yelling at interviewers like a douche. So if you didn't like Dean, you just didn't see his films. Easy.
 Then, at some arbitrary point, people started getting famous for far less.
 The quickest way to do this - to achieve fame for nothing - was soon discovered to be "owning a pair of tits" and, crucially, "showing them to everybody."
 With the rise of the glamour models - almost all of whom, crucially, were demonstrably not very bright - something snapped in people.
 Frustration, bitterness, hatred, and all the other things the Emperor would have approved of in "Return of the Jedi" began to simmer.
 Largely, the issue was one of jealousy. Intelligent, hard working people began to realise they would never succeed in life to the same degree as, say, Jordan (estimated net worth right now: £45 million. Demonstrable accomplishments: None.)
 As soon as people began prostituting themselves for money and fame, society began losing respect for anyone who was well known. It's hard not to be bitter and angry when you work 45 hours a week and will still never have the standard of living afforded to Jedward, or the cast of Jersey Shore.
 These people, to be clear, have forfeited their right to sympathy. If you want to appear in public and act like a talentless, braindead whore, you have no right to complain about the ire you draw. You may not even be acting. You may genuinely think it's alright to be thick, useless and unproductive. Which it is. What's not alright is when you think that being thick, useless and unproductive shouldn't be a barrier to immense wealth and adulation, because that's going to piss off a lot of people, and you'll only have yourself to blame.
 Unfortunately, the "useless/talentless celeb" thing has gone on so long that it has spilled over into the realms of the usefully famous, so that people feel free to treat creative, hard working celebrities with the same scorn that one would justifiably pour on Simon Cowell.
 We're so irked, as a society, at seeing people who contribute nothing at all to the world make their fortunes, that we also begin to suspect, usually wrongly, that all well-known people are useless and that we could do better.
 With this mindset constantly simmering, it doesn't take much to cause it to boil over.
 The author of the above piece that quoted Graham Linehan started her article with a run-on, grammatically ruinous sentence, made several punctuation errors (one of which made it very confusing as to when she was quoting and when she wasn't) and is also the victim of online bullying. A lot of these bullies, I would hazard a guess, are infuriated by the errors in her writing and feel the urge to abuse her because of them.
 Is this fair? Shit no. The woman in question is a campaigner for disabled rights and a carer for two disabled children. Just because I make fewer typos than her doesn't mean I'm a better person, because I doubt I could do what she does - I doubt I'd have the balls to even try. So whilst I have no problem referring to Big Brother contestants as a group of people who should, collectively, have been blowjobs, and who should be smothered to prevent the drain on public oxygen, I wouldn't dream of attacking or harassing an author who champions the rights of the less fortunate, even though I find it frustrating that she finds work in many prestigious publications despite a shaky grasp of sentence structure.
 Am I a better writer than her? Demonstrably, yes. Does this mean I should hate and bully her? Of course not. She's contributing far more to society than I ever have, and likely more than any of the people who harangue her over the internet.
 From what I can see, years of pointless, talentless, soulless cunts being paraded in front of us (often by a media filled with, and run by, pointless, talentless, soulless, manipulative cunts) and portrayed as somehow worthwhile has left us with the erroneous belief that nobody in the public eye is a worthwhile human being, and that all famous people are deserving of abuse.
 People aren't fair game to attack if their earnest efforts - whatever you may think of them - bring them to the attention of society at large.
 They're only fair game, in my opinion, if they put no effort in at all and still demand to be rich and famous. Those people should be chased through the streets with pitchforks.
 And until the price of pitchforks in this economy drops a little, save your anger for the people who deserve it.

*One assumes.