Edinburgh blog: Love’s a Beach writers on the horrors of fame

Every morning we wake up and thank our lucky stars that we’re not famous. Let’s be frank: it looks absolutely awful. Your every move is scrutinised, you can’t go to Tesco without your shopping list ending up on the Daily Mail – and the job prospects aren’t even that great.

We were inspired to write about modern celebrity after seeing a headline about an ex-Love Islander cutting the ribbon at the grand opening of a regional kebab shop. It seemed to us a particularly modern kind of tragedy; young people are absorbed into the fame machine, chewed up and spat out in an incredibly public and humiliating way, and then just left to try and start again.

There’s something gladiatorial about how we consume celebrity culture, and we reckon the people who currently rejoice in celebrity downfalls on Twitter would have absolutely loved throwing tomatoes at people in the stocks 300 years ago (disclaimer: history not our strong point).

The other thing that’s so striking is just how young most of our new celebs are. Modern celebrity today is less Marilyn Monroe, more Molly Mae. A lot of the influencers and celebrities we watch and follow are practically teenagers, still living with mum and dad, making content from their childhood bedrooms (or, when they’ve built up enough of a following, from their egregiously flashy rented penthouse, lined with crushed velvet and ring lights – we’d personally point them towards a stable mortgage and pension scheme).

But who wouldn’t do that at 18? At that age, most of us were spending all our disposable income on tinnies in the park and holidays to Magaluf. We were granted the freedom to go out clubbing, drink too much and end up puking into a grit bin, safe in the knowledge that the worst scenario would be that Jack, the boy from your maths class you have a crush on, would see and get the ick. For these young influencers, the world is watching.

There’s also the insane stress of your product being yourself. Numbers are everything – for young influencers, their following dictates their actual worth. Millions of followers and growing trends? You’re sorted (for now) and have a sponsorship with an up-brand nutrition company. Numbers in decline, however? You might be lucky to make a club appearance at a regional Bovingdon nightclub.

You’re also held to impeccable moral standards (expected to be an expert on every social ill, and to use your platform to champion every fashionable cause; otherwise #silenceisviolence) – and if you don’t, then there’s no protection. There’s no distance or sense of detachment between the public-facing persona and the person underneath. These are real people using their real names and being eviscerated in real time. And most of them are in their early 20s.

So what have we written as a result? A comedy about influencers that’s 50 percent what we’ve said above, and 50 percent r*mjobs and badgers. Please come and see us! And don’t forget to like and subscribe.

Love’s a Beach is at Pleasance Courtyard from 31 July to 26 August (not 13)

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