I am watching several people rise in stature and have noticed a disturbing trend. The more successful they are in the public sphere the more every last one of them looks and acts like everyone else in the same subset of their field. Their hair and makeup are similar (especially their makeup). They sound alike. Their interactions with fans via social media shift from personal to distant, if they don’t withdraw from social media altogether. The warmth, uniqueness, and approachability that won me at the start slowly but surely disappears. The change is fascinating.
I don’t believe it is a deliberate bait-and-switch. It may be the nature of the beast, part of what it means to rise in public stature. They may not even be aware they have changed. But it makes me sad. And it is frustrating to see how a narrow slice of humanity is tolerated at those levels of public life.