What if.. we all just started ignoring celebrities?

Here at eight&four, we love a bit of healthy debate. This is often thanks to our Culture Lab – a dedicated team of editorial specialists who focus on sourcing culturally relevant news, topics and moments every day.??

This week, we got talking about the above question, which came off the back of a TikTok from @heemaw. A simple concept, but one which caught mass attention – with the video seeing over 10.7M likes (and counting) in less than a week.? The video asked, what if we all just started ignoring celebrities???

At first glance, I thought it was amusing. I loved the idea of an A-Lister spending hours curating a single feed post and only getting 13 likes. If that level of engagement is mortifying for a nobody like me, then it’s the ultimate public snubbing for a big-time celeb, right? If we go a little deeper, we can see that it’s a reflection of growing mistrust of celebrity culture and paid endorsements. A cool f*** you to blind celebrity worship. In Culture Lab, we discussed whether it could snowball into a more serious trend and if that were to happen, brands might even have to be cautious about their consumers turning a similar scorn on them.???

A little later, I did what most people do on TikTok and headed straight to the comment section to get the low-down. I realised things might be a bit less ‘refreshing new take’ and more 'recycled form of dragging women’. Stay with me..?

A quick scan of the comments revealed that people didn’t just agree with the creator’s original sentiment but went on to suggest - and collectively agree on - which celebrities to go forth and ignore. Unsurprisingly, Jojo Siwa was one of the top nominees, with honourable mentions for Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Sabrina Carpenter.?

Cue the red flags. These names all being hugely successful female celebrities feels boring and predictable to me. Sure, we can find them a bit annoying sometimes, but this feels like a thinly veiled attack on famous women who are unapologetically vocal, taking up space in the public eye, with ‘ignoring’ them being this year’s chosen method of putting them back in their place.?

It's a recycled version of what I used to read as a teenager in all those awful rag mags like Heat and Closer, with features like ‘Who’s Hot and Who’s Not’ deciding which female celebrities were worthy this week and which were... less so (for absolutely no reason).

While the original post was probably a completely innocent joke, in less than a week, it's already morphed into something more political and more gendered with potentially some extremely problematic undertones.????

So, where does this leave us? Is it just harmless fun or something more insidious? As marketers, it’s a good reminder to dig a bit deeper into trends before jumping straight on the bandwagon. We need to look beyond the surface and think about what they might represent. It’s tempting to see the humour and run with it for a few hundred likes, but when a joke morphs into a collective agenda, especially one that targets certain groups, it can leave brands looking tone-deaf and promoting harmful norms.?

As we debated this in Culture Lab, one thing became clear: the stories we amplify as brands, whether that's via partnerships, campaigns or even memes, hold a lot of weight - more than we might realise. And while the idea of ignoring celebrities might spark intrigue, the underlying dynamics demand a more thoughtful approach. At the end of the day, culture is not just something we observe; it’s something we shape.??

To find out more about eight&four's Culture Lab offering, head to our website: https://www.eightandfour.com/capabilities