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The Oscars, a.k.a. the Academy Awards, were on earlier this month and with them came the usual round of sycophants bleating about how so-and-so wore so-and-so. In some ways, this year’s Oscars were no different than any other year, with a small pool of women getting undue attention for dresses that were boring and basic (if we are honest) and men wearing yawn-worthy iterations of the same old suits they have worn since the 1930s. The Oscars coverage was fun to watch in the days before Joan Rivers was assassinated for saying Michelle Obama is a man died on the operating table and when Kelly Osbourne was a punky, slightly voluptuous, extremely relatable shorty giving her young woman’s opinion on various red carpet looks.One quiet part that has not been spoken aloud is that this year’s Oscars drew only 17.9 million viewers. In 2010, the Oscars drew an audience of 41.3 million people. In the year 2000, it was 46.5 million. In 1990, it was 40 million. In 1980, it was 49 million. The highest number of viewers the Oscars ever had was in 1998, when 57 million watched the awards ceremony, mainly due to the success of the movie Titanic. Back then, it was difficult to imagine where the idols strutting under the spotlight would be so universally reviled.

1998 was the peak of celebrity worship, though the coming decline of celebrity was unbeknownst to most. The internet was getting started at that point, and the internet became the main smoking gun in what would become a celebrity bloodbath, with a shrinking pool of musical chairs for the elite and the elevation of random influencers from the hinterlands to supplant the famous in the space where it counts, which is in the imaginations of the masses.

The Gatekeepers

Turn on Peter Thiel’s Spotify and you’ll be able to hear all manner of home-recorded songs among the copious AI slop and major label artist bilge the AI was designed to copy. If you really want to delve into the obscure, my own original music is currently available on Spotify, and as its sole creator, I assure you that it was written, sung, played, and produced with my own budget equipment with zero help from anyone and no AI at all. I am the sort of purist who eschews autotune and pitch correction, because I think that a singer should be able to produce the same quality performance whether he is on a concert stage or crooning a lullaby to his toddler child. I am also a voice teacher, and I’ll take a moment to brag that my students are extremely confident performers. One recently landed the lead role in her high school musical and another (an adult) became the star of a popular local cover band.

Back in the 1990s, however, there were no home recorded artists on the radio or on MTV. There were no distributors like the one I currently use, Distrokid, to put indies on an equal playing field with Mariah and Britney. If you wanted to be on the radio, big screen, or television, you had to go through the gatekeepers, and for a woman, that meant getting on your knees. Mariah Carey married herself to übercreep Tony Mottola, chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment. The story of how he met her while she was a waitress is an obvious construct and a farce: I think she was sold to him, likely by her family. Poor Britney Spears was also likely sold, this time by her scheming father to Disney, and there are rumors that she and her clones were created from the DNA of Marilyn Monroe.

Whatever we believe about the origins of Mariah and Britney, the proof they were (allegedly) abused seems to be in the pudding. Both have been used up and thrown away by the industry, and it shows in their current level of productivity and ability to make good music.

The System is run on vampirism. It hates artistic talent and is obscenely jealous of it. Once the talent has been exhausted for its youthful beauty and vigor, the System makes it into a desperate mockery of its former glory, seeking to monetize the freak show of decay. Mariah turns into a pathetic cougar who can barely hold a tune in a bucket and Britney’s fractured, MK Ultra’d brain disintegrates while she apes old dance routines with kitchen knives.

In 1998, there was no way into the music industry that did not involve getting naked for a label mafioso. Actresses had it twice as bad. They were guaranteed a hotel room exchange with Harvey Weinstein and his allegedly infamous, stinking mangina. Winning an Academy Award meant that you paid for it on Weinstein’s couch. (What is it with hideously deformed Jewish men who are also sexually insatiable rapists?)

Modeling? That was always human trafficking, straight up, and yet another -stein handled that one . . . Jeffrey Epstein, plus his Tribe pals Les Wexner and Jean-Luc Brunel.

Say what you will about modern day internet stars, but it is fairly clear that being owned is a choice in a way that it was not in the pre-internet days. Justin Bieber, who initially became popular when he was a young boy singing on YouTube, made the gravest mistake of his life when he was “discovered” by Usher, who later gave him to Diddy as a human gift. Had poor Justin been more fortunate, he might have settled into comfortable internet fame (though likely not worldwide name recognition) and decent money without ever having to sacrifice his soul.

Who does this to themselves?

The most recent Oscar celebrity forays into the realms of extreme facelifts and Ozempic emaciation tell me one thing: celebrities hate themselves. I get it. First of all, money isn’t everything. Though it brings much comfort and a safe place to sleep at night, once our eyes close, we dream the same dreams, whether we awake in a cavernous master suite with a double sink bathroom and a vaulted ceiling or on a dilapidated couch in Mom’s apartment. Comfort is not everything and at some point, you begin to take it for granted if you do not cultivate constant gratitude for it as I suggest you do in my book Sacred Homemaking.

I am in my early 50s, post-menopausal, and my husband is 14 years my senior. Because of this and so much more, I am finding a thing or two out about getting older. My skin, once plagued by acne and oiliness, is now rather dry. I never had blotchiness or age spots like I do now. I’m not as skinny as I used to be, my jowls are increasing, I have rampant hyperpigmentation, my left eye is getting more crinkled than my right one, and everything is far less perky than it used to be. The celebrity’s answer is to get a total overhaul, and that includes Ozempic or another GLP-1 drug. LOL.

There must be a special kind of self-hatred in a person who deliberately signs up and pays $40-$80,000 to get the ligaments beneath her face and neck severed so the muscles and fascia can be remolded like craft clay onto the skull and squashed into a mirage of youth. We can only guess what such a ghastly procedure does to the nerves of the face, which after all must be detached and reset into a perverse trompe l’oeil of childhood. Is it any wonder that actresses who do this to themselves can no longer emote because their faces are a frozen mask in a perpetual reenactment of the gay moments before the leper crashed the gates and brought the Red Death to hold illimitable sway over all? What good is having millions of dollars when your face is numb, randomly tingly, and dead from forehead to chin? What good are luscious boobs when they are made of squooshy plastic that feels and like a floatation device? What is the point of being able to go to the best restaurant in the world when you’ve taken so many drugs, the thought of eating just one course sends you to the ladies’ room to have a violent vomiting session?

I would hate myself too if I was adjacent or (shudder) in bed with the Epsteins and the Weinsteins of the world. I’m sure the current power players are just as sick and deformed as the old ones. Now that Joe Public knows about the babies being cannibalized and the foster kids being siphoned through hellish, underground mills of ritual abuse, he is no longer interested in the shenanigans of the red carpet set. This is not 1998. Leonardo DiCaprio is no longer young and we can no longer make believe that he wasn’t Brian Peck’s butt slave at the tender age of 14.

Almost famous

Right about now, I’m feeling like the sidelining and marginalizing of my own talent when I was younger was a blessing. Not getting famous and rich is looking like the biggest bullet I have ever dodged. I was not symmetrical in the face, I could not dance, and my parents were good, morally upright people. All of those factors squelched my own ambitions to become famous. I used to think celebrities had it all; never would I have foreseen that they were the grubbiest and worst human beings this blighted planet has to offer.

I would not hang out with celebrities if you paid me handsomely to do so. I do not want to associate with pedophiles and pedophilia enablers if I can at all help it. Not only do they look weird — I am not sure why anyone would want to gaze upon Emma Stone’s emaciated body or weird, sad-that-she-is-no-longer 22 face — they are rubbing shoulders with cannibals of the worst sort. There is a good chance they are cannibals themselves.

Eew. Not only do I not want to come down with kuru (it’s contagious, according to science), I don’t want to be anywhere near someone who has done the things that give someone kuru.

Celebrities are in trouble for three reasons. For one, AI can make those boring action sequels/prequels/reboots with a fraction of the time and budget. The second issue is that they’re pedophiles and pedophile adjacent, and that’s just gross. Perhaps their worst problem though is the third factor. Celebrity puppeteers have tried to extend their former cults of worship and celebrities have become completely unrelatable in the process. Nobody is rooting for Martha Stewart anymore. She is 84 years old and looks 41, which makes it seem there might be a reason for her youthful appearance that involves adrenochrome. I would rather hang out with real 84 year olds who aren’t trying to look 41. Kelly Osbourne actually is 41, but as a gaunt, Cryptkeeper, stomach-stapled and highly-Ozempicked version of her former self, she is not relatable. She looks like someone who viciously hates herself and I do not want to be influenced by her. Nicole Kidman is so icky, I shudder at typing her name. Please look up what her father was convicted of doing. One of the worst tragedies in real time is that of Anya Taylor Joy, who showed up to an Oscar party this year in a black leotard and a hat. She looks emaciated, desperate, and like she has forgotten how to wear pants. Her newest face makes me wince, and the same is true for Demi Moore and Anne Hathaway.

Demi Moore was never all that stable to begin with, and at age 63, she continues to erode in front of the world. She re-emerges with a new face and body every few years, and it is evident that she will be inflicting jumpscares on whoever is still watching for decades to come if she can get away with it. Young, twenty-something Demi french kissed a young boy while high and drunk. Middle aged Demi married Ashton Kutcher, a Diddy pal and helper who seems to have blatant ties to vile, underground child trafficking networks. Present Demi is Starvin’ Marvin chic, flaunting her skinny shanks for the rapidly dwindling television awards show audience.

Somebody ought to break it to these losers that Meatworld is temporary and that nobody gets out of here alive. No matter how ritually abused and traumatized these celebrities are, at every point in the game, they have had a choice whether or not to grow old gracefully. I don’t feel sorry for them and I am surprised I still have enough interest in them to report on what they’ve done to their faces and bodies. And before the usual trolls come at me with “You shouldn’t be writing negative hurty words about them because that reveals something about you, Kimberly Steele,” I am going to preemptively tell you to shut up and get a life. These people have been forced down our collective throats for as long as I have been alive and if you aren’t grown up enough to handle me talking smack about them, you have and have always had the option to scroll away. It’s a free country and I will talk about whatever and whomever strikes my fancy. Go outside and touch grass.