Why We Care So Much About Celebrity Couples

If you have social media or keep up with daily celebrity news you know by now all the most recent and popular celebrity couples and gossip from Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift to Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner and the most recent addition, Olivia Rodrigo and Louis Partridge. The public and the media are always obsessed with who is dating who and everyone tends to have a strong opinion on certain celebrity couples over others. Many people seem to love Travis and Taylor while the majority of the public dislike Kylie and Timothée together. As one user on X (Twitter) named @SimpleMichaelaa says, “Travis and Taylor are so freaking cute I can’t anymore.” On a day-to-day basis, we direct so much of our attention to celebrities and care about what they are doing. For instance, when Zendaya and Tom Holland made their first public appearance together, seen kissing in a car, the internet was in an uproar. The new couple was the number 1 trending topic on X for days and most people had something positive to say, with comments from users on X and TikTok saying things like “they are perfect for each other,” and “they are the real-life Peter and MJ!” We care so much about all of these couples whether we like them or not. 

Why do we care so much about celebrity couples anyway? Perhaps obsessing over celebrity couples is our way of escaping our realities. We divert attention away from our own love lives to be onlookers for romantic couples we don’t even know on a personal level. We can speculate and observe for ourselves which couples deserve our stamp of approval. It is all a fun game for us. People will fight in the comments of TikTok videos to defend their favorite celebrity couples or hate on edits of couples like Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner. When the public doesn’t like a certain couple, even though they don’t know them, they will say “Oh this couple is clearly a publicity stunt.” A majority of social media users claim Timothée and Kylie are a publicity stunt while Travis and Taylor are real love! One user in the comments of a Taylor and Travis edit on TikTok wrote, “Kylie & Timothée could never.” Similarly, in an article in the US Sun, one critic wrote about Kylie and Timothée's relationship, “I bet the cameras were rolling for the show. The way Tim looks at camera is telling.” We make up these assumptions and get involved even though we don’t know how they are in real life. In The US Sun article, they write that fans of Kylie and Timothée “may be crying foul but people who know them are cheering them on and think this relationship actually has some legs and is going somewhere.” It would make more sense for Travis and Taylor to be a publicity stunt because Travis’s name has garnered more publicity from Taylor as compared to Timothée and Kylie who are both already incredibly famous in their own right. 

Humans love a good show - even if it's real people's lives. Directing our attention to celebrity couples and following what they are doing is similar to watching a drama TV show. Many of the American public were observers in the downfall of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston when he cheated on her with Angelina Jolie. The whole affair felt like a movie and then later led to Brad and Angelina’s messy divorce. We love to pick favorites and root for “true love.” Everybody can’t get enough of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. One user on X notes, “If blake lively and ryan reynolds ever split up, I’m never gonna believe in true love again.” People also said similar things about Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner until now, when they are in the midst of a divorce. Now fans like @xmbeth are saying, “Sophie turner deserves better” or another fan named @notrachelawl says, “If ur not team Sophie Turner in this divorce please unfollow me rn.” We like celebrity couples together until we don’t. As soon as the relationship becomes too real or messy we are against the idea of them together, but in our own lives, we are more reluctant to understand a confusing or messy relationship. If we look at Taylor’s love life, a lot of Swifties loved her and Joe Alwyn together until Joe seemingly could not handle all of Taylor’s fame. People loved their romance until Taylor and Joe broke up and then we picked sides. In most cases, people were rooting for Taylor. As one fan said, “ i love joe alwyn slander because literally no one cares enough to defend him it’s amazing to witness.” Although they broke up, Joe could still be the love of her life. Right? Even I am invested in this romance. 

It is hard to look away from celebrity couples. They are entertaining and problematic and they are our own personal reality show. The media likes to portray couples a certain way too. The media will categorize relationships like Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively as pure and perfect while Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox are messy and a rebellious pair. What if all these couples are one big show and publicity stunt? Each year is a new season with a new pairing perfectly constructed for our viewing pleasure. On Season 1, the odd pairing MGK and Megan Fox are in love. Then MGK cheats on her in Season 2, and Megan uploads her revenge post looking amazing. Their relationship was too entertaining as a viewer. The media could not get enough of them and neither could Gen Z. 

A psychological concept called parasocial relationships enables us to be invested in celebrities' existence. In the article “Parasocial Relationships: The Nature of Celebrity Fascinations” they explain how parasocial relationships are “one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other's existence.” Forming a parasocial relationship with celebrities causes us to want to be involved with everything they do. We learn to idolize our celebrity couples while enjoying the free entertainment. Our favorite celebs are seen as figures we want to mirror, similar to movie characters we desire to be like. However, movie characters are fake characters we look up to, but real people are much more multifaceted. Our favorite celebrities are not simply movie characters who are either “good’’ or “evil.” Celebrities are more complex than a role played in a film. But even in real life, we see fans root for certain celebrities over others. For example, Zendaya can’t really do anything wrong in the public’s eye while Kylie Jenner is constantly doing something controversial. Zendaya is “our queen” or “good guy” while Kylie Jenner is used as more of the antagonist in the media. 

A lot of Timothée Chalamet-obsessed fans especially don’t like Timothée and Kylie Jenner together because they want to be with Timothée, so they are jealous of him and Kylie together. Our investment and care for what celebrities are doing in the media is fascinating. According to a Harris poll survey of 1,000 American adults, nearly 40% want to be famous.  92% said fame is part of how they think other people define success. We idolize a different life for ourselves where we are the characters we create in our heads. But who is to say we still can’t dream and live vicariously through our favorite celebrities and their relationships? I’ll keep investing my time into celebrity couples because I too can’t resist the entertainment whether the relationships are fake or not.