DEEP DIVE: The Narcissism of Hollywood

In a world that rewards grandiosity and calls it "genius," we’ve accidentally built a culture that mirrors a personality disorder.

This week on Scandal Queens, I'm performing a sociological autopsy on the Narcissism of Hollywood.

We’re moving past the "diva" headlines to deconstruct how the industry’s obsession with the "Auteur" has infected our own homes, our mental health, and the way we treat one another. 

From the brain damage inflicted by parasocial relationships to the weaponization of therapy-speak as a tool for control, we are asking the only question that matters in 2026: At what point does our worship of the "Icon" cost us our own humanity?

Transcript

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Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another great episode of Scandal Queens. This today is probably going to be the deepest of deep dives I've ever done on this episode. Um, and this isn't so much about uh a specific celebrity scandal, as you can probably tell from the title. This is more about an all-encompassing trend, a horrifying pattern, a um disease of sorts that's taken over Hollywood and entertainment in the West as a whole. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the very thing that Hollywood is soaked in. It is steeped in it, it is saturated every single inch and piece. That's right, narcissism, narcissism, soft narcissism, overt narcissism, voyeuristic narcissism, communal narcissism. You look at the cult of celebrity, you look at Hollywood, and you will see every single version of narcissism live in action, the worst versions, the worst possible, most extreme versions that you could imagine. That's what it's become. It is a breeding ground. Hollywood, this these celebrity fandoms, Swifties, Marvel Heads, whatever they're calling themselves these days. All of it is the breeding ground for the worst, most self-centered, and hostile traits imaginable. And you know what? You some of you may not like hearing that. You may not like hearing that being the self-proclaimed part of the Swifty fandom makes you more likely to be narcissistic or makes you more likely to be psychotic, anxious, depressed. But that's a fact. That is a fact. And it is also a fact that Hollywood itself is getting more narcissistic. We can just look at the 25, 2025, 2026 uh narcissistic personality index updates, which show that across the board, celebrities are more likely to have narcissistic traits than non-celebrity people. And that's what we're going to be looking at today: narcissistic celebrities, narcissistic production, narcissistic fans, and what it is doing to us as a society because reality check. Narcissism isn't a bug of Hollywood, it is a feature. It fuels all of these lethal, toxic, heinous marketing plans, the fan devotions, the delusion of the talent, the parasocial relationships. All of it is rotting filmmaking. It is rotting movies, it is rotting us as a society from the inside out, and we're gonna be honest about it today. Now, before we jump in, let's do a quick temperature check on all the biggest celebrity scandals and controversies currently plaguing Hollywood and our social media platforms at the moment. Right off the top, Brittany Spears was arrested for drunk driving, uh driving under the influence. It happened in March 6th in California. Uh, Spears was reported to the police after she was spotted driving erratically. Um, it turns out she was under the influence of alcohol and drugs. They pursued her for an hour, they pulled her over, uh, they gave her some field sobriety tests, and then they called in what's called a DRE, if you've listened to the dispatches. And a DRE is a drugs officer. It's someone who can go beyond just the testing for basic alcohol, which is what your standard officer is able to do in a roadside sobriety test. Um, someone who can more effectively, efficiently uh see if there has been some kind of drug use involved, whether that is prescription drug use or it's some other form of illicit drugs. And it turns out, yes, Britney Spears was under the influence of what appears to be prescription drugs along with her alcohol. Um it there's stories, rumors going around that it was Adderall. I don't know if that's confirmed or not because that's coming from like the Daily Mail. The only thing I have heard that I believe is the dispatch calls, and I have seen the police who have since given public confirmation that it was drugs and alcohol together. Now, Britney Spears' mom has shown up in Los Angeles and she's been doing a bunch of public pleas, saying, Britney, please contact me. Uh Britney Spears' social media has gone dark, which is pretty scary in that Britney is obviously someone who is struggling, and that that was kind of the only window to us seeing what state she was in, and that is now gone. But also, I think it's probably pretty good that she's not on social media at the moment. I think she probably never should have been on social media in this state. Uh, not as visibly as she is. You know, if she wanted to do a private account or something, that would be fantastic for her, I think. But uh, I think we're gonna see what happens. It looks like Britney's finally setting some really hard and fast boundaries, but hopefully that is a boundary she is setting so that she can go and get better and not continue on in the state that she's in. Because anyone who was watching her Instagram before it got deleted, pretty worrying stuff. Next up, Rihanna's home was shot up during they're calling it a home invasion, but I don't really believe it is a home invasion. Um, it looks like a woman who they have not named who has been arrested, uh, pulled up in front of Rihanna's house and shot 10 times using a high-powered rifle. Um, I believe they said it was an AR-15, uh, but it was a high-powered rifle. Now, Rihanna and her husband, ASAP Rocky, were allegedly in the house at the time, and I'm assuming that also means that their children were in the house at the time, which is pretty terrifying. Um, but police are calling it a targeted attack. Uh, and it makes you wonder, is this is this on the back end of some kind of stan obsession or is this something deeper that we don't know about? Uh, it's very scary, but Rihanna is fine, her family is fine, uh, the woman is in custody, and that seems to be the end of the threat for now. Next up, quite interestingly, considering the topic of this week's episode, there was a uh quite a cold shoulder going on over the over the past couple of weeks from Brooklyn Beckham. It was Brooklyn Beckham's birthday on March 4th. He turned 27, and he got gifted a public post by David, Victoria, and Cruz, who were just like, happy birthday, we love you so much, we miss you. Now, that doesn't seem too significant except for the fact that Brooklyn has very publicly said he no longer wants a relationship with his family. If you've listened to the story, if you've followed the saga, it very much smacks of a narcissistic family. Those of you who've heard my other podcast episodes about narcissistic families, you know all about what I'm talking about. If you follow me on Medium or Substack, you've you've read all my narcissism articles, you know what I'm talking about. Uh these these families that like to perform the perfect family, but really the kids are just objects and they don't really care about them and yada, yada, yada. So when Brooklyn makes those those sorts of seeming accusations where he doesn't come out directly and say, I have a narcissistic family, but he he says I have a toxic family, I don't want contact with them, and then they very publicly make this display of how much they love him when that's something they could have done quite privately. It kind of gives credence to what Brooklyn was saying about his family when he's like, Leave me alone, and they refuse to leave him alone. There was no reason for them to be in public wishing him happy birthday. I'm sure they'll say, Well, that's the only way we can communicate with him. Well, no, it's not. You're celebrities. If you really wanted to get in contact with him, you could have sent him a message, you know, you could have done all of these things privately. Uh, you wanted the public to see this message to him so that you guys could look like the loving parents who are being shit on by their ungrateful child. So it I I've relatively I've just kind of been paying attention to this story on the outskirts, like on the periphery of everything else that you need to be paying attention to at the moment. But when this happened, it made me kind of perk up because then it does make you kind of say, All right, well, maybe there is something to what Brooklyn's saying, because if you're having these problems and your child has said, don't contact me, then you should not be making a public display of trying to contact him. So we'll see what happens, but there's definitely some red flags in that birthday message to me. And last but not least, Harry Stiles was back in the news. Um his his relationship, his up and down and sex toy relationship with Zoe Kravitz wasn't getting enough attention. So he has now gone and done an interview about Liam Styles, his former bandmate, and the grief that he suffers. And essentially the message of what he's he what what Harry Stiles said in this was correct, right? He he said that he's been criticized for not talking about it enough or not grieving in a certain way, and he's essentially saying, Grief, my grief is not your content. Which, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But I also find it convenient that he's now decided to have this conversation in the middle of a press tour for his album. You know what I mean? Like he could have he could have said this. I mean, how long has it been since Liam died? He could have said in the aftermath when people were, you know, barraging him for statements, he could have said this then. It's just interesting that he now chooses to use something that will get him quite a lot of SEO uh Google hits while he's promoting an album. When this is something that could have been said at any time if it was that significant. It's just um I yeah, I I I see a lot of red flags with Harry Styles, a lot of red flags as well. I've never liked him. I try to stay away from him, I try to stay away from his music. He gives me major, again, narcissism vibes, much in the same vein as like Taylor Swift. So uh it is just a it's just a bit icky. Yes, grief is not content. You do not have to grieve anyone a certain way. I don't think you should grieve publicly either. It's also not a good thing for him to go around using Liam's name the other way, being like, oh, my brother, my brother, my brother, when they clearly were not, you know what I mean? They were not that close. Uh and at that time. It it it that's also not right, but this feels again like a like a like a press grab, which is also just as icky. All right, let's get into it. The deepest of deep dives on the thing that you guys love to hear me talk about best narcissism, specifically the narcissism of Hollywood. It has become the death of art. I'll say that quite frankly, and no holes bar. The ego of narcissists has ruined mainstream film, ruined it, absolutely gutted it from the inside out and turned it into insufferable, indigestible trash. And that's what it boils down to narcissism. The whole industry has been penetrated by and taken over by straight up narcissists. And when I say this, I'm talking about people that would probably qualify for a narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis if they had the guts and the gumption to sit down in front of a proper psychotherapist. That is what I'm gonna be talking about this episode. These people have taken over Hollywood every inch, and when I say Hollywood, I'm not just talking about actors, I'm talking about major influencers, I'm talking about your favorite singers, I'm talking about producers, I'm talking about mainstream media, and I'm talking about the fans as well. It's a cesspool, a quagmire, a disgusting, nasty puddle of corruption, and it's destroying movies. That's why the movies feel so unwatchable. That's why every time you go to the movies, you feel like you're watching the same static, cardboard, regurgitated piece of trash. All of it now, the movies, the music, the PR campaigns, the clothing, the perfumes, all of it. All of it is a part of this nasty system that feeds on itself to create a vicious quagmire where toxic celebrities create toxic fans who line the pockets of corrupt, toxic, greed-filled producers and corporations who then feed it down and funnel it through the m flying monkeys that are the mainstream media outlets and social media platforms that they use to control narratives and manipulate us like the narcissists that they are. Art and talent, that rarely figures these days. That's why you have little chumps, little hacks like Timothy Chalamet sitting on a stage and thinking his five foot three ass has anything to lecture anybody about when all he's ever been in is third rate, third-cut remakes of other people's films. That is why we have the type of people that we have today. That is why the Kardashians continue to dominate in the media. It has nothing to do with talent, it has nothing to do with art, and it has everything now to do with narcissism and ego, and it's destroying not just films, not just entertainment as a whole, but it's destroying us as a society, us as individuals. It's literally destroying our relationships with each other. Now, it's a whole system, as I said, and we're gonna start right at the most obvious point. This is not the top of the pyramid, but it is the most visible entry point. It's the part where you get trapped, where I get trapped, and where the whole it's the sales funnel. It's the top of the sales funnel for this this really this really nasty trap that we're in. And that is the star problem. We're just gonna start with the star problem. It comes down to stars and fans and production and media and everybody else, but let's start with the star problem. Celebrities are more narcissistic than they have ever been, they are delusional. Again, just look at Timothy Chalamet's recent comments when he compared himself to Heath Ledger and Marlon Brando, like a delusional moron, but they're self-obsessed and they're more Machiavellian than ever. They'll say and do anything they have to to get what they want. They will pretend to be anything to get what they want, and they don't care if it hurts you, they don't care if it hurts society, and they especially do not care if it hurts the craft that they're involved in. That's the way they move because they are narcissistic. You can just look at the most basic, basic examples right off the top. Everything with these celebrities now, it's ego over story. That's why the movies suck, that's why Taylor Swift's last album sucked. It's all about look how special I am, look how important I am. Aren't I the best? I'm number one, I'm number one, I'm number one. It's just this delusional, empty, hollow, inhuman echo. We're seeing entire films now being written around stars, PR, and ego. They're PR strategists and they're egos. I mean, you can just look at what happened with Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively in this whole It Ends With Us production debacle, this this insane, what is it? Was it like a$50 million lawsuit now or something like that that they're battling out in court? If you go back and look at all those texts and all those emails from Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, they wanted militant, unquestionable control over that production. And they did not want it because they were creating art. If they wanted to create art, they would they would have not picked it ends with us. Okay, which is just literally one of the worst that that story, that writer, that book, awful, awful, like grade school. I in fourth grade, I would have been like embarrassed to read that to begin with. But they had this delusional idea that they were gonna control it, they were gonna own it, and it was gonna be a reflection of them because their egos were tied into it, Ryan Reynolds and Blank Lively. And through that, they made an abusive, destructive, toxic, threatening work environment, not just for Baldoni, but for tons of other people. Even the writer herself, there's there's an email from her where she's like, this is just like ridiculous at this point. I'm not gonna be involved in all this meh. Like it's absolutely disgusting. And it all came down to their ego, egos. They were tyrannical, and that's where all the fallout comes from, is all this toxicity that the two of them created from around, I'm gonna make this thing around me. It never should have been around them. It should have been centered around the story and the characters and the message that they wanted to convey to the fans, but it wasn't. It was about them, it was about their egos. And that's why we're getting so many diluted products, whether it's Taylor Swift's last album, that that horrific showgirl debacle, or if it's it ends with us with Blake Lively, her best friend, and Ryan Reynolds. Things are so diluted, they're so watered down, they're so predictable. Again, it's that hollow echo. Every movie is just a hollow echo of another hollow echo. It's because all of these things are being hollowed out by delusional narcissists who can't, they can't see themselves. They cannot see themselves for what they really are. Do you think that they can then look outside of themselves at something as prolific as, say, a Dostoevsky book and interpret that in any sort of meaningful way that's going to create meaning and value? Just look what Emerald Fennel did with Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights is such a groundbreaking, significant, potent, powerful story that has so many incredible themes that are painful, they're borderline traumatic, but they are powerful lessons and they show us a reality and humanity that we don't get to see in a Marvel film. You know what I mean? And Emerald Fenneld came along and turned it into flash porn. She literally turned Wuthering Heights into Flash porn. Unbelievable. And you know why she was able to do that? Because she's so wrapped up in her own delusional ego that she thinks Emerald Fenneld thinks anything she shits out is an artistic interpretation because she's decided she's an artist despite no evidence to that point. That's the delusion of a narcissist who can go, I'm an artist, and just shit something out and then call that art. It's not. It's not. You don't decide that, the public decides that, but narcissists don't see it that way. The world is what they say it is. Pure delusion. And that's why movies suck, music sucks, that's why the quality is going downhill across the board. By far, though, the worst trend we are now seeing in these narcissistic celebrities is what I'm going to start calling soft narcissism. The vulnerable narcissism and covert narcissism, I just don't think that qualifies it, especially in this era where you have women like Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez trying to sell um regressive trad wife bullshit to women whose rights are already in question. Um, but essentially soft narcissism. We're seeing soft narcissism everywhere. We're seeing it with Shia LaBeouf, uh, who every time he beats somebody or uses homophobic slurs or tries to beat up gay people in New Orleans, he then gets on a camera and talks about his trauma and how he's just so traumatized and he went to church and he found God. It is weaponized vulnerability. They're not throwing phones anymore. Russell Crowe is no longer beating, beating a hotel porter with a phone. Okay, that's not how we spot the narcissists in Hollywood anymore. You have to look for the people who weaponize vulnerability because that is exactly how they do it now. They replace things like, do what I say, I'm the most important person in the room, to something like, I'm setting a boundary. I had a really tough childhood. It's insanely manipulative. And here's what's really crazy, right? So we're seeing all these celebrities weaponizing mental health speak and therapy speak. We've talked about this before. You can go and listen to my other podcasts, you can go to my Substack, you can go to my Medium.com account, you can look at all this. I've talked about all this weaponized therapy speak and how it's becoming so common. But when these celebrities use this weaponized therapy speak, like for example, Selena Gomez is a great, great, great example of this. Selena Gomez used to openly bully people on the internet, like openly. She would be in comments, she would tell her fans to go after people. She was a nasty little piece of work. And when that was basically gonna tear down her brand, she was very chronically ill. She had lupus, she had to have all this stuff done. She's so sick all the time. It's she always becomes a victim. And then when that wasn't working anymore, she started a mental health app and she had to take a break from social media because of her mental health when she was the one bullying other people. They weaponize vulnerability. And here's what happens when they do that. When these celebrities weaponize vulnerability, so like when you try to hold them accountable and suddenly they have a mental health break and they they need you to be nice to them, they are pathologizing your consent. They are pathologizing the consent of the public. What does that mean? It means when a celebrity goes, Oh, don't be mean to me. That's that's mean and I mental health, I had a bad childhood. When they do that instead of taking accountability, what they create is a situation in which if you continue to disagree with them or question them, then suddenly you're toxic and you're bad. Because who would question their poor emotions, their poor brokenness? If you do that, you're a bad person. So they set you up for only one answer, and that's going, oh, poor baby, I agree with you. I won't question you anymore because trauma and mental health, you're right. No accountability because your mental health is manipulative as hell. It's one of the base narcissistic manipulation techniques, and we see it over and over and over again. You saw it as well with um uh Jonah Hill. Jonah Hill was doing that. Remember when those texts came out? Was it like a year or two ago with his girlfriend, where he would say things like, I'm setting a boundary, and the boundary was telling her what to do? That's not what a boundary is. A boundary is a line to protect your peace. It is not a demand on someone else's behavior. They do not have to do what you say. Like, that's not what a boundary is. But that's what we're seeing these celebrities do. We're seeing them set quote unquote boundaries, which are just meant to isolate whistleblowers, uh, excommunicate anyone who questions them, get people laid. Labeled as toxic if they try to hold this celebrity accountable or question them in any way. It's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly dangerous. And they do it over and over and over again. What you also see in this soft narcissism is them using this kind of therapy speak to set up quote unquote safe spaces. It's a shield. They're using mental health speak as a shield to keep them away from all questions. Ryan Reynolds was on press tours 20 2025 and earlier this year. And as he was being pressed on all this Baldoni stuff, emails, text messages that were going on, things that were getting revealed in court, court filings, he would say, Oh, I don't have he would say things that were essentially like, oh, I don't have the emotional capacity for this narrative right now, which is again, it's like, don't speak to me about that at all. Don't bring it up. It's not a part of my reality. If you do bring it up, I'm going to make you the villain. It's so incredibly manipulative. And that's just the kind of Machiavellian narcissistic stuff that I talk about so much. It's pathologizing consent. And it it stages them in a very dishonest way. Now, within that, I think it's very important to talk about um something, another, another kind of devious delineation of this, okay? This kind of this soft narcissism. And that is specifically, I I consider this to be a subcategory that female narcissists use, these soft female narcissists, and that is choice feminism. Choice feminism. Now, what is choice feminism? Uh, you'll see it in the comments of places like TikTok and Instagram and Twitter over and over and over and over and over again. It's this idea that any choice any woman makes is okay because she's a woman. So even if that woman chooses to be harmful, even if that woman chooses to uphold the patriarchy, we have to support her in that because a woman has a right to choose that, which is completely incorrect. That's wrong. That's that that's choice feminism always ends up just being white feminism. It's always used to basically tell women to shut up and accept the patriarchy. It's it's the patriarchy invading true feminism, which true feminism is liberation for everyone. For everyone. It is not upholding another oppressive system. That is not feminism if it is upholding the oppression of women, which we see a lot of white women that love to engage in that behavior. Specifically, Taylor Swift is an excellent example of this and how choice feminism is used in this narcissistic manipulation and parasocial relationships to create PR armies for them, essentially. So what Taylor Swift and her PR people do is she occasionally will make a statement that makes her look feminist. Like uh she'll say, Yeah, go out and vote, girls. And she'll say that like once every 10 years. And within that, she'll say, I'm a feminist because I once said go out and vote, girls. So then what happens is when she does very anti-feminist things, like when she gives her music to the White House to use in propaganda and anti-immigration videos, when she hangs out with a bunch of right wingers, when she's dating men who throw Zig Heil symbols, Zig Heil hand symbols. Uh, when she does all of that, anytime anyone questions her, her fans and her PR team essentially come out and say, Why are you questioning me? You can't, you're doing this because I'm a woman. It's because I'm a woman. You're sexist. I'm feminist. Weaponized choice feminism every single time. And then she releases this new album. Her fans are like, What the hell? You're singing in here about being basically a trad wife and singing about a three-brain celled football player's penis. This isn't very feminist. We've been fighting with anti-Swifties for years, telling them that you're not man-centered, and suddenly you're writing about Travis Kelsey's penis, WTF. It immediately became, you're only saying this because I'm a woman. You're trying to question me because I'm a woman. It's unbelievable, incredibly toxic, centering a toxic narrative for her fans, and then hiding behind fake choik choice feminism to avoid accountability. It's 101 narcissistic playbook, and it's unbelievable that her fans fall for it. She has literally some of the most gullible media, historically, socially illiterate fans on the planet. Like I would be humiliated to be used and abused and manipulated the way she uses, abuses, and manipulates her fan. But what about production? What about production? Because if you remember, just a short while ago, I said that celebs aren't the only problem. They are the opening of the funnel, but they are not the only problem. Well, if we were to turn that funnel around and pretend that it's actually a vacuum, it's got a nice big bottom and it sucks up to a teeny tiny little point. At the top of that teeny tiny little point would be production, what I'm gonna call the producers, the production. And that's not just for films, that's for music, it's for television, any form of entertainment that you like to ingest on a mass media mainstream scale, it's got production behind it. Even if you like theater and ballet and all that kind of stuff, all of these things have production. And if we're looking at this narcissism problem in Hollywood, in celebrities and influencers, we can't ignore the producers behind it all who put the money in, who select the celebrities that will be presented to you, who select the narratives that will go out about them. This isn't just directors. It's not just literally someone with an EP title. These can be managers, these can be PR people, these can be agents, these can be solicitors, these can be spin people. There's all kinds of people who fall under production. It's basically anyone who you don't see on the screen who makes the celebrity look like whatever narrative they're trying to sell. And if we're looking at that, we cannot ignore the narcissistic grifters at the top who are organizing, managing, controlling, and boosting the whole system. These are people who choose equally predatory stars, narcissists just like them, who they know will take just as much pleasure in manipulating and harming the public. And they also choose enablers and flying monkeys, people who will stay quiet when they witness abuse, people who will stay quiet when they know what's being done is wrong, when they know that they're spending fake stories to the media, when they know they're causing harm behind closed doors. These are the types of celebrities that they pick. That's why your celebrities are so disappointing now because they're picked by narcissists. They're picked by narcissists and they're farmed out to narcissistic people. Why would they be likable? They're either going to be weak-willed, spineless, brainless, flying monkeys who are happy to do what other people tell them to do at all times, or they're going to be just as evil as the narcissists in production themselves. That's why these stars are so unpleasant. It's because the people at the top are unpleasant. These producers organize press systems that insulate celebrities from accountability, that make them invisible. Like look at Tommy Matola, who's been abusing people for years and years and years. He was in Epstein files some 400, 500 times, 600 times, I think he was in there, emailing Epstein directly saying, Let's talk. They talked on the phone all the freaking time. These are the people who pay the PR people, who pay the social media managers, who get the story spun that they want spun so that they can get what they want. Which, if you think someone's a narcissist and you know that they're an abuser, do you think anything they want is going to be particularly good for the public or for anyone else? Probably not. Probably not. And these are the people who have dismantled the art of music, film, theater, production, people who had real crafts, real passions. They have dismantled it for their ego and their greed and their corruption. They've put real artists out of jobs and consolidated the entirety, the entirety of the entertainment industry, the full scope of the entertainment industry, down to computers who never question them. Why do you think they want AI? Yeah, so they can make more money, but also so that they can have fewer witnesses to their corruption and the ways in which they degrade society and continue to degrade society. Straight up. They want armies who are not going to question them and who are going to do the work for free so that they can continue to harm. They're creating algorithmic programs that pander to the worst, the worst behaviors and emotions in society. Why do you think they keep putting money into shows like baddies? Into shows like Unexpected with pregnant children, by the way, pregnant children, and their parents laughing, thinking it's a joke that they're pregnant at 13, which could kill them, by the way. A pregnancy at 13 can kill you. Henry VII's mother was 13 when she had him, and people were horrified and disgusted, and it almost killed her. She could never bear another child because you're not meant to bear a child at 13, and TLC has turned it into a show where they ha ha he he ha ha laugh about it. Of course, Hollywood, of course, your music, of course, your movies, of course, everything is gonna get more narcissistic. The people who are running everything are literal, diagnosable, pathological narcissists, and that's just one. I'm 99.9% sure a lot of these producers are dark triad. Look it up. Of course, I would be remiss to not address the kind of third level to this. The third level. So we've gone through the artists, we've gone through the producers. What's the third level? Is that the media? No, it's the fan problem. The third and final piece to this puzzle is us, you and I, the people who consume this narcissistic trash, who continue to swallow it down, even though it gets more corrupt and more toxic with every single swallow. All right. The fans are a huge part of the problem. And you're the celebrities know this. The celebrities and the production know this. They're doing it on purpose. They're cultivating these traits in you. They want your most narcissistic, base, disgusting instincts and behaviors and beliefs to come out. They trigger it on purpose because it makes them money and it gives them power over you, which makes them more money. They work really hard to create tribalized, weaponized fan bases on purpose. Unpaid PR legions who dole out punishment on those who question or criticize the celebrity or the system. Just look at Swifties. They're they are literally cult programmed attack dogs. They don't even think, they just lash out like they have been programmed to do. They're like Manchurian candidates. It's both scary and kind of pathetic. These celebrities and the PR machines and the productions behind them, they on purpose use parasocial and cult conditioning techniques. Specifically, they use NLP techniques. It was so funny when I was going viral for my Taylor Swift stuff. I had so many Swifties trying to swing at me and take a hit the fact that I'm an NLP MP, a certification which took me over a year to get, and which was given to me one-on-one by a licensed practicing psychologist who's been featured on the BBC, by the way. But these teams use NLP. There's a reason people with NLP qualifications can go and make six figures at corporations. It is using language techniques to manipulate your behaviors. It is how you center people in these cult behaviors, these cult beliefs, and these strong emotional responses. They use specific words on purpose. You break things down to the simplest thing, you use specific words, you use very comforting words, emotional words, open words, and you put, you make the other person essentially feel like they're the one coming up with stuff. They're the one in charge. They're the one responsible for you. We see this with Taylor Swift over and over and over and over again. You guys did this for me. You guys did this for me. Anytime she gets something, every time she gets something big, right? But when it comes to something bad, it's time to unleash the fans on people. It's time to unleash the fans. And that's done through very specific language that PR teams know how to use. Now, here's what's really interesting. They're starting to study this now. They're starting, they've they're for years now, they've studied these insane fandoms, and they're getting some really, really interesting results about how fandoms are affected by being super attached through parasocial relationships to these celebrities. It's literally making you a worse person. It is literally damaging your brain and making you mentally ill. Need proof of that? Well, we will just go ahead and look at the study that was published in September of 2025. Now, this was a joint study from the University of Wurzburg and the Chemnitz University of Technology, both of them in Germany. And the name of this study is The Dark Side of Fandom, exploring the associations between parasocial relationships with celebrities and aggression. The study was done over a series of years and it was looking at major, major fandoms like sports fandoms and celebrity fandoms, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And guess what they found? Guess what they found in this study? There was higher somatization in people like Swifties who are mega engaged in these fandoms. What is somatization? It's depression, it's anxiety, it can be chronic fatigue, it can be chronic pain, it can be headaches. That is somatization. It's your body becoming overstressed and your your somatic nervous system basically flooding your body with cortisol and panic. And then there were higher levels of psychoticism. Not kidding. You can go and look that study up. I'm gonna post it on my Patreon. So make sure you go over there. I will have the whole study posted there, links and kind of my thoughts on it. Uh higher levels of psychoticism, so psychotic, literally, literally psychotic behavior in these fandoms, and increased aggression towards out groups, which means anyone who wasn't in the group just automatically got increased aggression and hostility. These are behaviors that have been noted in fandoms like the Swifties. Unbelievable. These celebrities on purpose with their PR teams and productions, these narcissists are literally consciously turning people against each other, making them mentally and physically ill to make money, to insulate celebrities from question so they can make money and commit harm. Make money, commit harm, make money, commit harm over and over and over and over again. They've turned it into a machine that is degrading, literally degrading us as a society, damaging our brains, damaging our relationships, destroying art for what? To serve ego and fill their pockets. I mean, just think about that. I want you to really, really think about all of this, all of this nonsense that I've just poured on you. I want you to think specifically about these behaviors. Look at your own life. I want you to look at your own life. If you've got a like toxic, dysfunctional family, dysfunctional parents, siblings, friendships, relationships, whatever it is, I want you to look at that for a second. And I want you to imagine those people in your life, the ones who act like you're a background character, the kind of people who would intentionally set someone else to go and attack someone else or attack their reputation or attack their business or say horrible things to and about them, what kind of person in your real life would do that? What kind of real what kind of real life person would do that? A narcissist? A narcissist. And so many of us have been online for years now going, oh, this is my narcissistic mother, my narcissistic father, my narcissistic family. Well, if you're standing up against those narcissists, why are you still supporting celebrities? Why are you still ingesting their social media? Why are you still ingesting their films? Why are you still listening to their music? How can you? How can you? If you say that you're truly against narcissism, how can you stomach it? How do you sit there and listen to a Taylor Swift album? How do you watch anything with Selena Gomez in it? When you you claim to have done all this work to not be against narcissism, why are you still paying court to narcissists? In that vein, I want to leave you with a few questions. A few questions before we close out everything and wrap up everything for the day. Number one, if you've kind of something's kind of working in your head now after this episode, I want you to stop over the next week and I want you to do a self-audit. I want you to do a self-audit. Specifically, this is what I want you to do in the self-audit. I want you to look at your life. I want you to look over maybe the last 10 years, look at the circumstances of your life, and I want you to think about every moment in which maybe you were held accountable for something, or someone wanted you to be responsible for something, or you felt backed into a corner. Did you take accountability in that moment? Did you step up, hold your hand up, and say, Yeah, no, I I screwed up, that was me? Or can you name instances in which you yourself have used therapy speak or your mental health or whatever it is as an excuse for not taking accountability? Have you done that? If so, why? Are you gonna do it again? I want you to really like turn the mirror on yourself. And if you do happen to verify those things, I want you to then stop and turn that mirror back around on the celebrities that you ingest. Are you perhaps a reflection of something you don't want to be a reflection of? Second thing I want you to think about, second question. There is definitely a pedestal tax that comes with being a celebrity. Okay? These narcissists put them up, put themselves up on this celebrity pedestal, and a lot of them pay the price of like not literally their soul. I'm not saying like in a demon way, their souls, but like their humanity. That's probably a better way. They kind of sell out their humanity and they sell out the people around them. How many dead celebrity children, addicted celebrity children have we seen, families wrecked by Hollywood and everything that comes along with it, all the narcissism and Machiavellianism and psychopathy that's entailed in these Hollywood circles to begin with? There is a price to pay, and there is a serious price to pay, including your empathy and your humanity. Is that worth it? Is it worth it? Knowing that you being a super fan of Taylor Swift encourages her to stay this way, to stay harmful, both to herself and others, is that worth it? I mean, we we never see her without a drink in her hand. The girl seems drunk 99% of the time, and presumably that has something to do with the pressures of her career. So is that worth it? Is you getting another subpar shitty AI album worth someone crushing themselves with alcohol because that's the only thing they have the freedom to do? Dunno, it's a question for you to walk away with this week. And last but not least, the last question I want you to think about before we wrap on this episode is talent versus terror. Talent versus tear. Uh, we see these kind of traditional, overt narcissists like Shia LaBeouf stomping around, hitting women, attacking gay people, um, slinging homophobic slurs. Uh we see that all the time and we go, oh, but he's so talented, but he's so talented though, so we have to keep giving him chances. Where's the line? Where's the line? Is he gonna have to kill somebody? Is he gonna have to kill Mia when he gets too mad at her one time? Is he gonna have to kill somebody in a bar for us to go, oh shit, maybe he was a little like awful. Where is the line? Where is that line gonna be and how long are we, you and I, you and I, going to continue to platform literal monsters? And that's gonna be it. And that's gonna be it. That's where I'm gonna leave you for this week. It's been a much longer episode, but we gotta get in there. We gotta get deep on the deep dive. We gotta get deep on the deep dives. And before I fully like close the book on this deconstruction, I just want you to remember this narcissistic Hollywood system, it's a part of this gilded cage that we've been talking about. The same thing I talked about on that episode I did a couple weeks ago about Tommy Matola and Mariah Carey and all these singers in the music industry. This gilded cage that's a part of all of this, has been a part of Epstein, and it's a part of these narcissists like Taylor Swift now. It only stays standing as long as we keep paying the admission price. You know what I mean? Like we have the choice at any point to stop engaging. We can just look away. We can block these people, we can block the accounts that talk about them. Even if you're blocking me, even if you're blocking me, like we can erase these celebrities from our reality without harming them. We can just stop paying attention to them. That's it. Whether it's the rotting glamour of these housewives, which I talked about last week, or weaponized therapy speak of Shia LaBeouf and Jonah Hill and all Ryan Reynolds and all the rest of them and Taylor Swift, we have the power to stop being supply because that's what it is. You paying homage to Taylor Swift, your supply. You're not a person, your supply, your supply for someone else's ego. Is that what you want to be? I don't know. Maybe you too. If this episode gave you that click moment, or you just kind of had a light bulb that went on above your head, or maybe it gave you ick. Maybe it kind of put a name to the ick that you've been feeling about all the stuff you watch on Netflix and the celebrities that you follow. Um, if you felt any of that, um, don't let the conversation in here. Let's keep it going. You can join the inner circle over on patreon.com where my friends and I are building a podcast network. Uh, just go to patreon.com slash newska. I've just released a therapy speak trap reflection guide so it can kind of help you spot the patterns of therapy speak, not just in these celebrities, not just in these narcissists in the media, these toxic influencers that are triggering you with very specific NLP speak, by the way, which cognitively manipulates your behavior. Um, you you can get all of that over on Patreon. That will help you kind of, you know, get yourself more clear on what's happening. I also have research dossiers on Epstein and Matola and all these other deep dives. So you can go over to patreon.comslash newska if you want to get that therapy speak trap reflection guide. Now, if you really Really want to look more at narcissism and the cult of celebrity and why you're getting the ick from Housewives and all these other programs, head over to the real ebjonson.substack.com. There is where I've got all my long form essays. I recently published one called The End of the Empathy Contract, which just explains why we're feeling gives a little bit more of a specific look at voyeuristic narcissism and how empathy has been cut out of the entertainment industry in such a way that it no longer feels comfortable to watch because you're watching like real blood and guts being spread across the screen for money and entertainment, and it's it's very, very, very icky. If you want to stay connected, then you can follow the chaos in real time on Instagram at ScandalQeens Podcast, and you can catch the 60-second receipts over on my TikTok at the real EB Johnson. And if you love what I'm building here, please, please, please. I would appreciate it so much if you would take 30 seconds to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. It's the easiest way to help other people find this podcast, and it just helps me grow. I'm not doing this for any money. I don't get paid to do this. I'm just trying to grow something that's mine. So if you want to help me do that, please leave a five-star review. Because you and I, together with this podcast, we're deconstructing the world. We're not just deconstructing celebrity, we're deconstructing the patterns in our own lives. We're deconstructing what is holding us back together as people, and we're gonna make the lot the world better, like breaking down these scandals one at a time. So thank you so much for being here. As always, super grateful, and I will see you next week. Keep your secrets close and the receipts closer. Stay scandalous, queens.