The Age of Magical Overthinking

“We are steeped in the normalized myth that we are, each of us, mere individuals striving to attain private goals. The more we define ourselves that way, the more estranged we become from vital aspects of who we are and what we need to be healthy.”

folks with higher anxiety are quicker to engage with, and slower to disengage from, negative information; so, “as a trait and state,” anxiety itself perpetuates paranoid thinking.

those who “worshipped” people they really knew, like parents and teachers who could make tangible contributions to their lives, had overall higher self-esteem and educational achievement. Glorifying pop stars and athletes predicted the opposite—lower confidence, weaker sense of self. This finding supports the “absorption addiction model” of celebri

It’s really no wonder, then, that so many Taylor Swift acolytes slip into the “Borderline-Pathological” category of standom.

early-life isolation may cause emotional deficits that can make someone more likely to focus on “trauma in the virtual world,”

parental absence exacerbated participants’ inclinations toward celebrity worship.

correlation between celebrity stalking behavior and insecure parent-child attachment.

addiction and criminal activity were more strongly connected with celebrity worship than calcium intake with bone mass or lead exposure with children’s IQs.

a feedback loop that can reward performative online personas more than genuine artistic vision.”