In the early aughts, Paris Hilton invented a new type of celebrity: famous for being famous. Hilton became a regular character in the tabloids in 2001 and was deemed New York’s Leading It Girl, but most of us know Hilton from her stint on The Simple Life, a reality TV show that tracked her and fellow socialite Nicole Richie’s experiences doing manual labor on a farm. The reality show was, in its own way, an invasion of privacy, but it was a contract Hilton willingly entered into. “I basically created this character that was basically what I thought the audience wanted, like, ‘Oh, she’s rich, so she needs to be a spoiled airhead’ — basically what the producers told me to do,” Hilton said during a recent screening of The American Meme, a new documentary that tracks the rise of influencers like Hilton, at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival.
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