I imagine there's an element of solipsism to these sorts of situations. Perhaps you can only get so obsessed before the object of your obsession starts to become literally an object to you.
> The camera tends to turn people into things, and the photograph extends and multiplies the human image to the proportions of mass-produced merchandise. The movie stars and matinee idols are put into the public domain by photography. They become dreams that money can buy. They can be bought and thumbed more easily than public prostitutes.
The other side of this coin is that celebrity culture tends to literally be the selling of a person as an object.
The number of people who are incapable of understanding that the image portrayed of celebrities in the media is literally them selling you a manufactured image, and nothing to do with an actual human being, lifestyle, or genuinely held belief or personality I imagine must be staggeringly high.
