The #Celebrity Entitlement Complex: How Much Do A-Listers Really Owe Their Fans?

The floodgates have officially opened.

For years Hollywood's biggest celebrities have been living a life that none of us could imagine, and it's been easy to see them as simply luckier than the rest, or #blessed, or whatever word for damn I wish that were me you'd like to use. But nowadays the winds are blowing a bit differently, and there's a noticeable change in the air. Celebrities are starting to realize that this Hollywood machine has become a bit of a monster, and thanks to seemingly wonderful inventions like Twitter and Instagram, there's no such thing as privacy anymore.

But does this blowback go too far? When Justin Bieber announced yesterday that he's officially building a proverbial brick wall between himself and the fans who gave him everything, it seemed to bookmark a period when everyone is setting boundaries—boundaries that we didn't all agree to.
At what point does a celebrity's craving for respect and space become a scenario of biting the hand that feeds them?

It could be argued this all started with Jennifer Garner. It should be no surprise, of course, that the powerhouse in charge of the "He can cast quite a shadow" quote heard 'round the world also was one of the first actresses to take a stand against paparazzi. The supermom of three, alongside Halle Berry, helped shepherd through a California law back in 2013 that protected children of celebrities from lurking (and often aggressive) photographers. The actress was sick of being stalked down by paparazzi and wanted to put an end to the assumption that just because someone is famous, they want to be hounded all hours of the day.

"I think that there's an idea that because our pictures are everywhere that we are complicit in it," she told Today. "When what really happens is they're waiting outside our door every single day. I can't go to the mailbox without getting my picture taken. And so I don't."

Thanks to Garner's hard work, celebrities started to realize that there was a world in which they didn't have to accept an invasion of privacy as just a fact of life. Slowly but surely, they started fighting back—literally and figuratively. A middle finger here. A little shove there. And who could blame them, when the people on the receiving end were the dreaded paparazzi?

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