Basic Trope: Tabloid newspapers exploit and embellish celebrities' private lives.
- Straight: Alice, a famous movie star, begins dating Bob, a famous quarterback. As soon as they become an Official Couple, the news is all over the tabloids and Internet.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice isn't even dating Bob. In fact, they barely said two words to one another. But the tabloids are speculating that they're seriously dating.
- Alice is legally an adult, but causes a scandal when she is seen having one glass of wine at a fancy restaurant on a date, thanks to Contractual Purity.
- Men get upset with Alice for dating Bob, allegedly because he'd end up "holding her back" creatively, but really because their fantasy about her as being available to them is now ruined.
- Alice is a Former Child Star or White-Dwarf Starlet who hasn't been in show business in decades, but the tabloids still talk about her.
- Downplayed:
- A Home Porn Movie Alice made years ago with her boyfriend at the time is "leaked" onto the Internet.
- Alice sits down to lunch at an outdoor café. When she's spotted, legions of adoring fans hound her for autographs and selfies. (All she wanted was to eat her sandwich in peace!)
- Justified: People want to know what celebrities are doing.
- Inverted:
- Alice isn't a public figure, she's a private citizen. But rumors about her private life quickly start flying around her school or work all the same.
- Alice writes tabloid articles.
- Although Alice is a celebrity, she has a private personal life.
- Subverted:
- Alice and Bob have a secret wedding.
- Alice leads a relatively boring personal life. She has only minimal social media presence (most of which is outsourced to a PR team or social media manager, rather than being handled directly by Alice, and is almost entirely related to her work, rather than anything personal), doesn't go out clubbing, doesn't date, doesn't go out unless she has to, etc.
- Alice was in show business a long time ago, and has since left the industry.
- Double Subverted:
- They decided to keep it hush-hush, so that tabloid photographers and journalists wouldn't bother them at the wedding. (And said people still found a way to publish a few pictures related to the wedding and announced to all and sundry that Alice and Bob got married.)
- Alice deliberately keeps her personal life as private (and un-scandalous) as she can, because of the tabloids.
- Tabloids still talk about her. She can't gain weight without tabloids speculating on whether she's pregnant or has just "let herself go," as if she were still a household name.
- Parodied:
- Alice is hounded by the tabloids even though she appeared in one commercial 30 years ago!
- Alice farts on the sofa at home. The next day, it's on the front page of The Daily Enquirer.
- Zig-Zagged: Some celebrities (usually the ones regularly involved in scandals and other exploits) are tailed more than others.
- Averted: Alice is a private citizen, not a public figure.
- Enforced: Money, Dear Boy
- Lampshaded: "Oh, no! It's the tabloids!"
- Invoked: Alice makes a minor gaffe on social media.
- Exploited:
- Alice deliberately leads the most boring lifestyle she can, so the tabloids will figure that it's not worth tailing her.
- Alice uses a tabloid scandal to get back in (or stay in) the limelight, or to buck her former "good girl" image.
- Defied: The tabloids don't follow Alice.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The tabloids publish a story about Alice that is completely false, and she sues for defamation.
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