35 Celebrity Scandals That Were So Ridiculous That We’re Still Shocked They Even Happened

Some of the funniest moments on this list that we've all had the pleasure of witnessing happened for one reason and one reason alone: constant surveillance. Whether it's a paparazzo lurking nearby or just a smartphone in someone's pocket, the reason celebrities get caught up in so many public scandals is that there's almost always a camera around.

In fact, psychologists point out that humans need boundaries to maintain a sense of agency, and when those boundaries are stripped away, it can lead to paranoia and hypervigilance. Over time, that can seriously affect a person's sense of reality, as they're constantly being put under a spotlight in a way most people never experience.

In fact, being constantly perceived by others can be so damaging to our minds that we might actually act out of purpose. Celebrity psychologist Mark Schaller has spent years researching celebrity behavior and how the brain adapts to the unique pressures that come with fame, and the results were shocking.

His research found a connection between the onset of fame and subsequent self-destructive behaviors or erratic, "scandalous" choices. One explanation is that these actions can serve as a psychological escape mechanism, a way for people to temporarily switch off the intense self-monitoring that comes with living in the public eye.

Some of these scandals, you might notice, are things that would have gone completely unnoticed if the people involved weren't in the public eye. After all, a couple getting divorced is hardly funny, but because these people are famous, we often see them as sources of entertainment rather than as real people dealing with real problems.

This is also partly because we, as consumers, tend to dehumanize the people we see on our screens. Experts have conducted research suggesting that because we usually see celebrities only during highly edited, curated moments, audiences can experience a cognitive disconnect. So when celebrities make ordinary human mistakes, we're more likely to turn those actions into scandals.

And, well, we also tend to view celebrities through the opposite kind of dehumanization — we start believing they owe us something beyond the content they're paid to provide. This is a beautiful little concept professionals call: parasocial retaliation.

So not only do screens encourage us to dehumanize celebrities, but they can also push us in the opposite direction. When a celebrity's entire brand is built around being a perfect, wholesome, socially conscious role model online, their margin for error practically disappears. The moment they do something in public, or even in private, that falls short of that, they're suddenly under fire.

Of course, many of these are just quite ridiculous to begin with. Having an influencer pretend to be another race to get more attention, or licking a donut at a donut shop for no reason whatsoever (to this day, everyone is still questioning Ms. Ariana Grande), are choices that are pretty bizarre.

But ultimately, that's what makes them funny and a little wild, and it goes to show that everyone makes mistakes — and hopefully learns from them. So, what celebrity scandal did you find so weird that you ended up laughing, but isn’t on this list? Let us know!