The Oxford English Dictionary defines a celebrity as a “famous” person, “much praised or talked about [OED, 2014]”. Wikipedia defines a celebrity as "a person who receives a significant degree of public attention [accessed May 9, 2014]". However, these definitions are far from complete, as we generally do not call Adolf Hitler a celebrity even though he continues to be widely talked about and holds public attention from the grave; the same could be said of Osama bin Laden or Joseph Kony. The answer, of course, is that although they are commonly talked about, they are not, as the OED says, "vaunted" or "celebrated." Yet, are the people who are exalted or celebrated really considered celebrities, and are the people we call celebrities really exalted and praised? Albert Einstein or the Dalai Lama are celebrated and praised, but it is not clear whether they can be classified as celebrities. One thing is clear though; Celebrities are an integral part of our cultural discourse and daily lives. Famous chefs are printed on condiment labels, famous actors and singers are constantly seen in daily life, and even famous doctors tell us how to live on daytime television. Who are these celebrities? Why (and how) do people become celebrities, and what function do they play in society (if any)? Exploring such an integral part of our culture will likely reveal much about ourselves as cultural participants. The creation of a celebrity's image is a bit of a causality dilemma; trying to distinguish whether celebrities create their own image and decide what they are famous for, or whether ordinary people prescribe a celebrity's image, is probably a futile effort. Celebrity culture can be seen as a democratized process (middle of paper ......, 1995], and the new generation of media celebrities began to resemble simulacra in their own right. Even as far back as Plato, the people were confronted with this concept, because Plato refers to statues on top of buildings which are intentionally distorted disproportionately, in order to make them more real to the people on the ground looking at them; viewed on a real scale, they would seem ridiculous and false [Plato, “The Sophist”]. New celebrities such as Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford or Greta Garbo were now represented by distorted realities, so ordinary people on the ground could see them in a better light, whether through conscious effort or not, simple ignorance, or vast discrepancies in lifestyles, the public began to reduce these people to their image alone [Marshall, 1997].