I am of the “same shit, different medium” school of thought on this stuff.

I am of the “same shit, different medium” school of thought on this stuff. Celebrity and political figure scandals have been reported on with puerile interest for as long as print media has been around — and prior to that, it was still an active subject of gossip, music, theater, novelization, etc. This drama takes a slightly different form because it is online media figures, but scandals between artists, magnates, and political blowhards were heavily written about a century ago, too. It’s arguable that it has always been a pointless distraction then as it is now; I would argue that in cases where the gossiped-about figures have a political impact, it is newsworthy. In this case,I think Jones and Musk alone have enough of an impact on our political reality that reporting on them and their exploits is valuable to society…even if our motives for finding it interesting are not pure.