" People you haven’t met are easy to idealise, but people who don’t exist
are even better. Once you’ve met someone you’re faced with both the
uncomfortable realisation that they’re a person and the exhausting prospect
of paying attention to what might be unique about them. Invented idols can
be controlled.

What happens when we’ve long admired someone for their talent and
then find out that despite the fact they excel at darts, they’re socially
conservative? How can we go on enjoying the way a person throws
miniature arrows at some circular cork now that we diverge politically?
And what if we find that people who make art can be terrible, perhaps even
criminal? How do we get back the time we wasted enjoying their work
before we knew that we wouldn’t have enjoyed it if we’d known? Can we
not get some kind of certification of sanctity before we allow ourselves to
be moved? Because to be moved by something made by someone who has
done something bad would mean that a bad person possesses the capacity
to connect to us; that they haven’t, somehow, forfeited their humanity.

So we must be on guard against gurus, lest their imperfections infect. "

― Richard Ayoade , Ayoade on Top