Idea 5: Crowdsourcing celebrities' ego check.

This post might be a bit more specific to South Africa but can work anywhere where celebrity culture has not yet set in on a ridicolous scale. Apologies England, America and Italy - we cannot save you all.


In South Africa, we are fortunate not to have an annoying celebrity culture - yet.
It is not strange to see our musicians, athletes and actors mingle naturally with people at a social gathering or in public. They sometimes seem sheepishly uncomfortable with any special attention as opposed to just purring to the stroke of their ego. Let me be clear, this is a GOOD thing.


Everyone in that position needs someone to keep them anchored, given our collective distain for big headedness.  A certain singer in SA, after becoming famous, asked his close friends to check his ego whenever they felt it was getting out of hand. They had the right to tell him very frankly when he was losing his footing on humble ground and, if he was to get annoyed by any rebuke, he was to be reminded that he commissioned it in the first place. He explicitly outsourced the checking of his ego to his close friends.


But what can celebrities do if they are only surrounded by other celebrities and "limelight cling-ons", with no-one to do this checking for them? Enter idea number 5.

1. A blog is created where people can submit stories of encounters with celebrities, both positive and negative.
2. These stories will have to be moderated by a panel of "ego checkers" or else it will just become a cacophony of insults, defenses and baseless opinions.
3. These stories are then published on the blog for the public to rate the celebrities' "ego health", based on the stories published about him or her.

The intention is not to turn it into a slaughterhouse for celebrities. Stories about cheating husbands, drugs, speeding fines,  and the like will not make it onto this blog - that's what tabloids are for. However, if you asked the hooker, dealer or traffic officer "do you know who I am?", we will grill you like Nando's in the public domain.

Let me give you specific examples of the kind of stories that would make the cut. I am not giving the name of the first person as I only heard this via someone else and it might have happened too long ago.

An example of a 1/10 "ego health" 

A well known rugby player,  was chatting to a girl next to the swimming pool at a party in Cape Town. She probably thought that the friendly banter was going quite well and asked him for his phone number. He agreed and asked her for her phone. When she handed it to him, he tossed it into the swimming pool and laughed at her for thinking that she could have the audacity to ask him for his number in the first place.

An example of a 9/10 "ego health"

I used to have my breakfast at the same place and time as Nina Swart at one point. It was in the middle of the morning on weekdays so the coffee shop was not that busy. After the 2nd or 3rd morning, she initiated the customary greeting of a smile and gesture you would expect from someone sharing a fairly quiet space for the 2nd or 3rd consecutive morning. Later that week, there was an opportunity where she introduced herself with a plain "Nina, how do you do". Anyway, does she look like someone with an ego problem?

You will need a couple of things to make a site like this work;

1. Excellent "keepers of the gate". Your moderators will control what is to be published and what is not. With great power comes great responsibility.
2. A sytem for the featured people to defend themselves if they feel that a story was taken out of context or was untrue.
3. A way to check that the stories are true. A story teller should either not be anonymous or it should be substantiated by more than one person.
4. A culture that hasn't yet fallen terminally ill to celebrity importantitis.

I would like to hear your thoughts on the workings of such a site and ideas for a name.