Celebrities are ‘untouchable’ when it comes to breaking lockdown rules, says academic

This year isn’t quite going to plan for most of us.

While we may have hoped we could leave our troubles behind as we raised our glasses on New Years Eve, 2021 is still, so far, as cursed as its predecessor.

The country is tolerating its third lockdown, with most of us confined indoors without much hope of socialising.

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However, for some people the struggles we face seem to have bypassed them entirely.

Aside from the super-rich, another a group that is not having it so bad are celebrities and influencers.

Many have riled their fans by visiting places such as Dubai or the Maldives, during a time when stringent travel restrictions are in place.

But it is not simply the act of these stars visiting such locations, but more so their incessant need to publicise their trips to their Instagram followings, under the guise of ‘work trips’.

But this has not been done without a backlash. The Sun recently reported that Love Island stars-turned-influencers Laura Anderson, 31, Anton Danyluk, 25, and 27-year-old Kaz Crossley have lost more that 33,000 followers as a result.

Series four islander Laura, recently sparked outrage by complaining it was “really hard” being an influencer while soaking up rays in Dubai.

But will this negative reception to their posting change the nature of what the famous post online in the longterm, and could it see the death of aspirational content posted by influencers?

We spoke to celebrity expert Professor Chris Rojek, who explained his view on the matter.

He said: “The idea of acting in a way that’s good for society, I think a lot of them [celebrities] find it difficult, because they don’t see themselves as part of society.

“They see themselves as a privileged enclave in society, paid far more than everybody else, with freedom of movement that others could only dream of so they don’t live by the rules that the rest of us live by.”

However, he believes that “celebrities are here to stay, there is no evidence that bad behaviour in terms of breaking lockdown rules is having any affect on them.”

And as for losing followers, Chris admits that this is relatively minor.

He said “That’s small enough to regain in a short period of time I would have thought.

“The other thing to stress is there is a great band of celebrity, the very top celebrities, that are untouchable, but maybe the reality TV star are more vulnerable as they don’t have that distance from ordinary life.

“But anybody that thinks celebrity is going to change as a result of lockdown is barking up the wrong tree.

“It wouldn’t be so established in western society unless it was performing some sort of necessary function.

He concluded: “I go by the evidence and if the evidence isn’t showing that people are changing their feeling towards celebrities, as a result of bad celebrity behaviour, the conclusion must be that celebrity is pretty invulnerable to bad behaviour.”