Photo: Instagram, Josh Helfgott
Demi Lovato doesn't come across well in Josh Helfgott's viral Instagram post. "Thanks for not looking us in the eye, asking our names, or saying two words to us," he writes, still reeling from his unsatisfying meet & greet with the singer. "And thanks for keeping your jacket on for photos while your team collected the wet jackets of fans who waited in the rain to meet you." It's the sort of post that makes perfect headline fodder - painting Lovato as ungrateful, disrespectful, even rude. But there's a line further down, buried within the carefully-worded diatribe, that paints an altogether sadder picture.
"As I walked out of the room," Helfgott recalls, "I saw you slam your head back against the wall in relief - we were your last picture. Meeting your fans was over. You didn't run out - you just stood there." He meant, of course, for this anecdote to further illustrate Lovato's rudeness. But instead, it conjures a picture of an artist nearing the end of their tether. An artist so overwhelmed by having to perform their own personality - fixed smiles, surface interactions, camera flashes - that, when it's all over, all they can do is stand there.
The celebrity blog Oh No They Didn't ran the story with a handful of tweets that seemed to corroborate Helfgott's experience. "Just met Demi and it was the weirdest m&g experience ever I'm still confused," tweeted one fan. "She was just kinda like standing there smiling and nodding like it seemed like she wasn't really there in the moment." Later, they compared the ordeal to "meeting a wax figure."
There are no explicit displays of rudeness in these anecdotes - just an unnerving level of detachment on Lovato's part - a disassociation, perhaps, borne out of self-preservation. It can't be fun to be wheeled out like a circus attraction - particularly when the playing field is so disastrously uneven. How do you negotiate a social interaction, knowing how much fans have pinned their hopes and expectations on these few minutes? Perhaps it's easier to just smile blankly, to embody the wax figure you're being forced to become.
People in Brazil who bought Meet and Greet tickets for Avril Lavigne costing $800 were not allowed to touch her! WDF? pic.twitter.com/24t4y6tp1p
— ✖️David✖️ (@Mr_Reckless2) May 4, 2014
Of course, meet and greets are unfair on fans as well. The hefty price tags - the most expensive package Lovato's management offer costs $10,000 - are designed to exploit the well-intentioned but obsessive passion of those who have looked to their idols, from afar, in some of their darkest moments. But the pedestal on which they've placed Lovato, or Avril Lavigne, or Taylor Swift, will inevitably crumble once they meet in person, and realise that they are as real, and therefore as flawed, as anyone else.
Besides, when the level to which your idol will interact with you is entirely dependant on how much money you have, it makes the whole thing taste a little bitter. So how about we just scrap the whole charade altogether?
