Google "paparazzi for hire" and you'll see a host of results from companies such as Celeb-4-A-Day, which allows you to hire your own temporary entourage, including photographers, publicists and bodyguards. It's a culture that might be explained by a society smitten with celebrity magazines and blogs that are fueled by paparazzi shots of Britney, J. Lo and other Hollywood A-listers. Perhaps this type of image is what non-celebrities now equate as a symbol of beauty and status.

[---]

"We all have an image to protect nowadays," says Rony, citing social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook as driving forces in this new industry. "Someone needs to polish that image."

[---]

"Everyone likes a little bit of attention and to feel special," says founder Tania Cowher. "Everyday people should get just as much attention, if not more, than celebrities."

These nobodies make me laugh; they think photographs and social glamour will make them "important" and "special," when reality is that only a tiny fraction of these nitwits actually become famous, and 95 % of them are socially trained chimps that sold themselves to appear on TV. The fact that these people constitute our role models in today's society, goes to show just how neurotic and dysfunctional our world has beome.