I love, and am attracted to, shiny objects. Midnight stars, colorful beads, glassware, crystals, the sun glinting off water. In a similar fashion, much of humanity is attracted to shiny people, but be warned: All that glitters is not gold.
Shiny people and their audience tend to trounce logic and reason to the hurt and chagrin of everyone, but especially logical people. There is no room for them at the inn, because they are most likely to tell people exactly what they don’t want to hear, that the shiny person’s foundation is not solid rock but weak infrastructure, and too many people are gathering on the balcony. Such wet blankets are forced out of the happy group, to wander in seclusion.
Shiny people dress in literally shiny outfits with lots of glitter, sequins, bright colors, and power suits. They surround themselves with plenty of actual shiny objects, the more over-the-top the better (golden toilets, for example). Shiny people love a good show, and their audience loves a good show too. That’s entertainment.
Shiny people seem to know inherently how to charm others (or blind them) with their glitz and glamour, and those who love it are like moths to a flame. Just like the basic biology concept of symbiosis, the one can’t exist without the other. Audience and performer all share a high of sensationalism, surrealism, excitement, and mystery.
This isn’t about one-time performances in which you leave on a high note with the thought, “That was fun! I’d like to do that again, someday,” but “Wow! I can’t wait to see what they do next!” Once an audience member has invested some time and money into a shiny person, the superior feeling they get from being associated with them is nigh impossible to break. It takes a personal catastrophe (others’ tragedies involving the shiny person in question, can be reasonably explained away) to shock an audience member back into reality.
Shiny people are like the fusion reactor in Spider-Man 2 (2004); they build their glow and following slowly, but soon they are radiating like the sun with thousands or millions of followers. The more energy they receive from their crowds, the hotter and brighter and more unstable shiny people become, until they finally explode. An explosion from a shiny person necessarily heaves debilitating, even deadly (financial, emotional, spiritual, relational, even sometimes physical) shrapnel to their unsuspecting crowd. And just like Doc Ock’s fusion reactor, the moment a shiny person loses all control is typically unpredictable.
The Midwest Courier 