4 Strange Problems Only Celebrities Seem To Have

4 Their Personal Problems Affect Their Entire Image Forever

What's the most embarrassing thing you did as a kid? Peed somewhere you shouldn't have? Fell face-first into dog shit, which all the girls saw? Performed a complex heist of Fort Knox, only to be foiled at the last second by Special Agent Lance Dickheart, the bastard? Now, a follow-up question: Do people still think of you as Piss-Pants Bill, Poopy-Face Ryan, or Grorrgh the "Would Have Been Super Rich But Got Foiled By Lance Dickheart Instead"? Of course they don't. You either grow out of it, move to another town, or eat the hearts of all who dare to speak your name in vain.

For celebrities, it's another matter. Every little thing they say or do is recorded somewhere, and every single mistake they make will put a dick-shaped dent in their image. You can become one of the world's most beloved actors and earn enough money to start a collection of human souls ... yet any damn second some dickhead can slap your past mistakes on the table for cheap publicity. Your past is owned by the public, and they will never, ever let it go. Sometimes, I think about the kind of psychological effects that shit must have on these people, and I'm suddenly way less envious of the giant pile of money that cushions the slightest bump on their orgy trains.

That is, unless you're someone like Nicolas Cage. What do you think when you see the name? It's probably tons of bullshit movies, screaming, or general, rampant overacting that borders on Matthew McConaughey levels of crazy. All of these are valid observations, and I strongly suspect all of them can be traced to the fact that the man doesn't understand the concept of money. He went famously bankrupt a few years ago, thanks to his $30 million per year spending habits, and although he's still leading a very wealthy lifestyle by most definitions, he's clearly struggling enough to keep doing those films that have made him a living, breathing meme.

Look, I'm going to say it right now: Nicolas Cage is an excellent actor. Ebert loved him. Multiple peers have praised him as one of -- if not the -- finest actors of his generation, and, every once in a while, he even shows it. Dude could have become a Daniel Day-Lewis, but, instead, gravitated toward high-octane action movies and, once shit hit the fan, the occasional turdstorm to temporarily patch the giant leak in his ever-depleting money silo. That's the difference between rich-people money problems and, say, me. If I lose what little money I have, I become poor, but, at least, get to keep a modicum of dignity. If they become poor, they're still richer than I will ever be, but run the risk of becoming butt monkeys for life.

Oh, some people bounce back just fine. The word "murderer" has been hovering above Robert Durst's head for decades, and he seemed to do as fine as whatever chaos demon in charge of his brain can, before The Jinx changed the game. Everyone is sort of aware Sean Penn is a writhing pile of dicks sheathed in a vaguely man-shaped skin casing, yet he keeps racking up prestigious starring roles and awards like it ain't no thing. Actually, can someone explain that one to me? I've been wondering for years why karma hasn't just dropped him head-first into a fire-ant mound.

3 We're Actively Trying To Break Them

Remember Jennifer Lawrence? Of course you do, she's making smash-hit movies as we speak, and, chances are, she has a very bright future ahead of her ... no thanks to you. For the last couple of years, 2014 in particular, J-Law (shit, we actually loved her enough to give her one of those stupid nicknames) has been the toast of the entire world, especially the Internet. She's had it all: youth, lucrative and iconic roles, and a string of hit movies under her belt. Her clumsy-but-fun, everyday-cutie personality was more than enough to hide the fact that she sometimes behaved like a bit of a dick. As celebrities go, everyone agreed that she's the best.

So, of course, we had to break her.

Remember what the Internet adorably named "The Fappening?" Of course you do, it was last September, and you probably still have some of the images saved on your hard drive. The Internet unearthed a huge cache of Lawrence's (and a bunch of other female celebrities') private naked pics and gleefully turned the occasion into a worldwide jerk fest, in both senses of the word. For a while, the whole male online world went into a feeding frenzy, despite the fact that Lawrence made it pretty clear that she considers each and every person who seeks out the pictures a sex offender. Although she soon attempted to regain her media composure with a tasteful magazine-cover nude, she's been comparatively reclusive since, and, lately, the biggest headline you're likely to see about her is some fucking paparazzi shot where she walks her dog.

I'm using J-Law (shit, now I'm using it) as my example because she's the most recent notable case of us gleefully tearing down a celebrity, but I guarantee that we, as a howling sea of individually intelligent animals that together make up a mindless mob known as the public, have done that to the overwhelming majority of high-profile people. We haphazardly toss dudes such as Kanye West and Hugh Grant into the Chris Brown/Alec Baldwin-populated pile, labeled "dickhead-rage monsters," because they once flipped out and backfisted one of the 10,000 paparazzi shoving lenses up their colons every waking hour. In their shoes, most of us would be collecting necklaces of paparazzo teeth within weeks -- don't pretend that you wouldn't.

As for Lawrence, I'll wager cash money that, in a dark corner of her mind, she'll always resent those people who were swearing they would never let anyone harm their precious favorite celebrity one second, and then queued up to look at pictures of her naughty bits the next. Will it make her more bitter or more careful about how much she'll give of herself to the world? It's too early to tell. But, I bet she'll never be the media darling she once was again. She now knows what we are.

2 They're Doomed To Repeat A Pattern

The funny thing about celebrity is its predictability: You gain fame by doing something worthy of prominence in your field and then keep doing that same thing on a regular basis -- until you don't anymore, causing everyone to forget that you existed. Maybe you leave the game voluntarily and use the profits to pursue your less high-profile interests, such as underground gerbil fights. Maybe you're able to stay up there forever by making yourself relevant in multiple fields, a tactic known as "Clint Eastwood-ing." Or, maybe, you find yourself in a landslide that inevitably leads to the aforementioned sex tapes and a screeching match with Gary Busey in some seventh-rate clone of Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew. Perhaps it will be a sex tape with Gary Busey. It all depends on your personal level of desperation.

Sure, the life of a common schmuck, such as you or me, is also pretty predictable. Most of our lives can be divided into a half-dozen tasks, with the occasional extracurricular activity to break up the monotony. However, where our routine is, well, routine, celebrities balance on a media tightrope, which is held at each end by rabid iguanas, while dodging flaming bags of shit that are thrown by their "fans." And they have to do it with a smile. That life is normal to them.

The problem isn't just that they're confined to life on Planet Hollywood (not the shitty 1990s restaurant), but the fact that everyone else they know is, too. When the Native American actors and actresses understandably walked out from the set of Adam Sandler's latest racism-fest, a producer was legitimately confused by how they found names such as "Beaver's Breath" and "No Bra" offensive when Sandler's character is a friend of these dubiously named characters. "It's all right, Gobbles All Dicks in the Tri-State Area. How could it be wrong? After all, the hero thinks you're OK!"

And then there are the child stars. You've read what happened to Sawyer Sweeten, and you know he was far from the first and only successful child actor to go down that road. Let's ... let's not even visit the whirlpool of predictable madness and destructive behavior that is the life of a child star, actually. Cracked writer and actual former child star Mara Wilson already did it better than I ever could. Besides, I'm the wrong guy to talk about kids, anyway. I was crafted into full adulthood on a shipyard back in 1912.

1 It's A Psychological Hellhole

To fully understand the absurdity and very specific pressures of a celebrity, let's do a little thought experiment. Let's assume that a person with my exact looks and mentality -- we'll call him "Pauli" -- manages to break it big in Hollywood.

Before long, he starts developing an inflated ego. If he has any tendencies toward narcissism at all (which he has), chances are it'll evolve into full-blown megalomania. Oh, but he keeps it all in check -- he's the nicest guy in the world in public. You would happily have a beer or 16 with Pauli; he's an awesome dude. That's the persona he's been trained to expose in public. It's what feeds the machine.

But, celebrity-induced "I'm the hottest shit" syndrome is like any other psychological condition -- if it goes unchecked for too long, which it will unless your career comes crashing down or your money well dries up, it's easy to start letting every stupid thought make its way out of your stupid mouth. It will happen because you're so used to having no one to step in and tell you that you're being a moron, and you legitimately think your dipshit opinions are important and correct. And that's when you find yourself patronizing poor people about food stamps.

That's when the "Marlon Brando in Apocalypse: Now phase kicks in, and Pauli starts turning up for Dickman VIII: The Dickening with an entourage of skateboarding llamas, weighing 400 pounds, insisting on writing his own dialogue, and wearing the muumuu he stole from Steven Seagal, instead of the iconic Dickman garb.

At some point, some equally powerful player will say "enough" and borderline blacklist Pauli, but he won't even notice -- he's far too busy living in a bubble of crazy he has constructed over the years. He'll sink deeper and deeper in his mansion, Howard Hughes-ing his last remaining years until he inevitably perishes for being a fucking idiot who eats too much/uses too much "medication"/exercises too little.

So, yeah. If there's anything to take away from this, it's that I would probably be the best celebrity ever. So come, friends, give me money and fame. I promise to return your trust with gifts of chimpanzees and glorious ranting.

Pauli is on Facebook, Twitter, and the cover of the magazine.

For more from Pauli, check out 5 Real Vehicles That Only Fictional Superheroes Should Drive and 5 Ways To Abuse Your Body To Greatness (That We Tested).

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