What gives some the belief that they are better than others? What elevates these people to their seemingly exalted standpoints? What then affords them the arrogance that they so readily exude – because I’m beginning to wonder – are reputations simply handed out these days, or are they still earned?

Come on. Really? Everybody knows that reputations, be they positive or negative, are earned. As for those people who like to act as though they balance on the upper echelons of the ladder of life when realistically they are not much more than moronic, snivelling little piss-ants, they likely suffer some sort of mental affliction such as megalomania or hypomania whereby their ostensible and indeed, their projected level of grandiose is far superior to the rest thereby creating an impenetrable force field of blinding scintillation…

If you would, shift your focus to the music industry. On the one side we have truly venerable pop artists, such as Madonna, Christina Aguilera and perhaps to a lesser extent, Lady Gaga – individual acts who have been around a while, who’ve shown class, flair, uniqueness; have perhaps been the centre of the occasional scandal but nothing overly destructive and most importantly, who have exhibited longevity. Then we have the blow-outs. Britney Spears was among the first of the teen idols to be destroyed, followed later by Miley Cyrus, with Justin Bieber beginning his insalubrious implosion just recently – so who’s next?

I dunno. Ask the media.

There it is. The disgraceful truth. It is our irreverent media network that is responsible for not only celebrities’ rise to status but their subsequent, or given the age at which they are cast into the limelight some might say inevitable, fall from grace.

The media builds them up; the media shoots them down.

Take a look at Kim Kardashian. She was nothing. She didn’t even do anything spectacular. Yet through her appearance on some crappy reality TV show, she rose to the height of fame, brought along for the ride her two nothing sisters, where she then embarked on a series of marriages, gaining through this not a husband but even more publicity, therefore status, until finally settling on another talentless loser but media favourite with a great deal of undeserved status himself, Kanye West.

So what if you aren’t in the media spotlight? Who allocates status to regular folk? Also, why does this great allocator seem to give out chunks of status disproportionately and to what can only be described as an arbitrary cross section of people? Moreover, why so very frequently are we finding that the pond-scum of the world – the shit-buckets, the drop-kicks, the douche-bags – the ones who by right are the least deserving of status, are those same ones who are seen to be breezing through life with their flash cars, nice clothes, cute little girlfriends and apparently living their lives from the precipice of personal and social grandeur?

Hold up. Stop asking questions. Firstly, to that one just there, the answer is illusion. That and a lot of debt.

To elaborate: this is an example of a phenomenon that I have coined, ‘Pretentious Status’. Most commonly found among the incapable, the feckless and the ignorant, Pretentious Status is the mind’s way of coping when the being it’s fronting, just isn’t very good. People who are genuinely good don’t require a surplus of self esteem, it’s there because they’re awesome and they use it accordingly. The hyphenated group mentioned above do require extra helpings of self esteem because, well, what else do they have?

Problem is, in producing an additional quota of bodily goodness sometimes the brain makes an excess; in which case you are left with a delusional douche-bag who thinks the world of himself and will only ever become more of a douche-bag in your eyes because his self assuredness is so very misplaced.

Kanye West isn’t very good – he can’t sing and he can’t dance but he’s really stupid and he does look pretty cool, so the media allocate him status. Remember Taylor Swift? Gorgeous. Yeah, she’s still there but the media stopped her allocation of status because she’s quite clued up and of late she’s been acting far too sensibly.

The World Media have a lot to answer for. They have ruined a great many good, hitherto prosperous lives.

Status is overrated and unimportant anyway. Don’t try, just be.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Richard Pullin

Photography by Owen Carr