Do you remember the Eastenders story arc last year where Phil Mitchell went completely mad, took a load of drugs and booze, wound up naked on the floor with some other woman (Rainie so Wikipedia informs me) and got up to a load of general shenanigans that kept lots of viewers captivated for weeks? Sound vaguely familiar?
Now, replace the words "Eastenders story arc" with "real life story", "Phil Mitchell" with "Charlie Sheen", "Rainie" with "a porn star and a model" and "general shenanigans" to "incidents involving machetes, unwise phone calls, bizarre interviews and Twitter". Welcome to the wonderful world of the public mental breakdown.
Charlie Sheen became well known (in America at least) as the only man that could have sex with a string of beautiful women whilst also, simultaneously, being in his mid-30s and wearing shorts with white socks, in TV show Two and a Half Men, pocketing $2 million an episode to boot.
Meanwhile, at the very same time as being insanely popular, he also started going a wee bit mad. For example, over the last six years, his roll call of misdemeanours goes something like; divorce citing alcohol/drug abuse and threats of violence, felony menacing, criminal mischief and third degree assault, rehab, anger management and being banned from owning a gun (In America, somehow). Yet, he was still something of a media darling through his role in Two and a Half Men.
And, now, over the last year he has stepped it up a notch on the mental breakdown Richter Scale, incorporating more drug taking, trashing hotel rooms, abusing the Executive Producer and writer of his hit show, getting fired from his show, staging insane interviews with national news channels in the USA, wielding a machete from his balcony window, living in something of a harem with two busty blondes and becoming a Twitter millionaire (and popularising the hashtags #tigersblood and #winning). That's how to crank up the crazy to 11. The next thing to do would be to start bombing people that don't like you.
All the while, the media has been there to capture his latest act of madness. Now, obviously, Sheen has been courting the media, inviting them into his home to talk/ramble on to them, phoning up radio stations that fly planes over his house with the station's number trailing behind the planes and setting up a Twitter account for the masses to see his thoughts. Naturally, the media has sensed a good story here and will take all their opportunities they can get to get some more column inches/airtime about it.
But here is the rub. Clearly, this is a man in the throes of some kind of mental breakdown after years of drug abuse and a pretty unstable personality anyway. What is the solution to a person suffering mental trauma? Oh yeah, recording his every move and giving him huge exposure and then crying crocodile tears when it all goes tits up, as it inevitably will as huge drug taking by a person in their mid-40s has but one outcome; death.
However, in the Twitter age, this goes beyond a problem to blame on 'the media' with the masses also playing a role in the unhealthy obsession with a man suffering from the after-effects of a bitter divorce battle. Yes, he courts the limelight but can you honestly believe that he is a man in control of himself currently? Perhaps some of the people who got #tigersblood trending or #winning were innocent enough to believe it was a jocular comment made by a reasoned Sheen but I'm just as certain many people saw it as a laugh at the expense of the poor man.
Where will this obsession end? Will it be when he goes to rehab? When he stops talking to the cameras? If he self-harms? If he kills himself? Perhaps, at some point, it will become clear that the blood sport of taunting fallen celebrities has a limit though don't count on it, the Internet is a harmful enough place for the sane to roam, let alone the mentally unstable.
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