I had this thought in reaction to something said on Fantastic Planet the other day. He was saying something about how even in most repressive circumstances, people are allowed and encouraged to mindlessly chatter about the inane comings and goings of celebrities. And that got me thinking how this would be an awesome thing to subvert, and actually make meaningful beyond just empty celebrity worship.

Like, for example, what if you devised a system of philosophy or some kind of secret teaching which used different celebrities as symbolic carriers of different elements. Sort of like how some people claim that the tarot was designed and utilize as a teaching device for arcane philosophy, but was disguised as a game to divert attention away from it’s real purpose. Or, if you wanted to be less esoteric and more practical, you could have it be some kind of steganographic system for encoding actual messages and plans for subversive groups and activities.

Unless you knew the encoding system, you would just perceive anything communicated using the “celebrity cypher” as meaningless chit-chat. It could become like a sort of “mystery religion” where the hidden interior meanings are only communicated to initiates, and only in progressive stages of revelation. Plus, the other fun thing you could do with a system like this, is that you could use it to go through and synthesize new patterns of meaning out of the movies and other appearances of the various celebrities in your cypher.