To my dear friends from the HiveLearners community, my best regards!
One thing I notice in today's society is that we are living with a lot of fanaticism. I looked up the meaning of this word (in Portuguese), and I think we all understand what it actually means:
fanaticism
- obsessive religious zeal that can lead to extremes of intolerance.
- partisan factionalism; blind adherence to a system or doctrine; excessive dedication to someone or something; passion.
(Oxford Dictionary)
I was surprised to find in the dictionary the explicit mention of excessive dedication to someone, which is precisely the point of today's discussion. Fanaticism is not necessarily linked to religion, as some might assume. Yes, this word is accompanied by experiences that, in the past, were social traumas related to religion and its conflict with society. Today, contemporary society admits other types of fanaticism, such as for football teams (something extremely common in Brazil).
But what about when this fanaticism is linked to a person? Generally, we might think that if someone has excessive dedication to another person, being interested in knowing what they do, following their daily tasks, and trying to be close to them in places where they weren’t even invited, then this fanatic is also a stalker. We don’t have a word for this in Portuguese, so we borrow it from English.
Now, let's go deeper: if we have multiple fanatics excessively dedicated to the same person, we have a legion of fanatics! A crowd of stalkers! A collection of possibly unwanted individuals orbiting around an excessively monitored person, such as...
Man accused of stalking Shakira arrested!
InLeo users may need to access the video manually:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6oQnag5gVQ
And that's not all. In the world of artists, we have cases to remember that make us reflect on the limits and freedoms that can be accepted in social coexistence. Many people believe that their freedoms can override the limits of others, which is a mistake. Individual freedoms stop at the boundaries of other individuals' privacy.
That’s not what happened with Lady Diana, the princess who was always surrounded by the media spotlight. Since marrying Prince Charles, she became the most photographed person on the planet, living under immense pressure.
At that time, a type of fanatic was the so-called paparazzi. In my understanding, they were photographers who pursued celebrities day and night, everywhere, aiming to capture analog photos that would later be sold to newspapers and magazines. Since humans value controversy more, the media started focusing on her marital problems, personal dramas, and love life. Princess Diana faced depression, bulimia, and the tumultuous end of her marriage to Charles, which officially ended in 1996.
After the divorce, media harassment got even worse. On August 31, 1997, while trying to escape the paparazzi photographers, the car she was in suffered a fatal accident in a tunnel in Paris.
Diana, Princess of Wales, died trying to escape fanatics /
Img Source And that’s how fanaticism took the life of a person, among so many others who are affected and have their mental health shaken by the constant exploitation of their image, in search of small mistakes, missteps, awkward expressions, or anything that could damage their reputation. We are talking about lost lives!
So, when I see celebrities and their toxic relationships with their fans, I immediately recall these situations and realize that in today’s media, we often hear about people being aggressive toward local celebrities. Influencers with little reach (local, or at best, national) are being targeted for physical aggression attempts and even having their clothes and accessories forcibly taken as if they were souvenirs.
All of this leaves me perplexed and makes me want to stay away from these networks and these people.
What do you think?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6oQnag5gVQ 
