About Mondo Stars

Quick Links

Looking for a star? See all the stars here at MondoStars.com.

What Is Mondo Stars?

'Mondo' is Italian for world, and this service covers the world's news and opinion leaders, so we call it Mondo Stars.

Unlike mainstream media outlets covering celebrities, Mondo Stars focuses on the input and opinions of site users like you to create profiles of the stars.

We created this because it's entertaining to find out what people really think about other people, in particular famous people who have carefully crafted and well defended public images. Often the celebrity persona is little more than an amalgam of a publicist's fantasy and a star's bloated ego.

We also developed Mondo Stars in the belief that it's instructive to see just how far the business of "celebrity journalism" can stray from reality. The reason for this seems clear enough -- celebrity journalism exists to sell you stuff, and selling you stuff is a very big business.

Celebrity Journalism

Charla Lawhon, managing editor of In Style magazine, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that "our readers feel that they actually know the stars."

That is the fundamental illusion of celebrity journalism. In the popular media, we are constantly encouraged to believe that we can understand people by seeing how they dress, what they drive and where they eat and drink and shop. This way of thinking is the result of what is known in the marketing business as "branding."

Branding seeks to convince us that our emotional needs can be met by buying stuff. When consumer products are associated with various emotional states, the act of buying and using the product can give us at least a temporary experience of the related emotion. How do you feel when you see someone driving a Mercedes Benz? And how do you feel when you are driving one, if you have had that experience?

We would like to believe that ideas matter more than images, and that we are defined by our beliefs and actions rather than our possessions. You might think of Mondo Stars as a modest experiment to test that proposition.

Your Participation

You can rate each star here at Mondo Stars once per day. We also encourage you to participate in the star forums as often as you like.

With your involvement, we hope to learn new perspectives on the stars and gain new insight into the nature of celebrity.

Please contact us if you have any comments or suggestions to improve Mondo Stars.

About Us

Mondo Stars is produced by Mondo Code LLC, an online production company which makes tools to give you fast access to print and electronic media. We are based in Boulder, Colorado USA. Visit our company web site to get our take on best practices in web production.