That is, unless you're someone like Nicolas Cage. What do you think when you see the name? It's probably tons of bullshit movies, screaming, or general, rampant overacting that borders on Matthew McConaughey levels of crazy. All of these are valid observations, and I strongly suspect all of them can be traced to the fact that the man doesn't understand the concept of money. He went famously bankrupt a few years ago, thanks to his $30 million per year spending habits, and although he's still leading a very wealthy lifestyle by most definitions, he's clearly struggling enough to keep doing those films that have made him a living, breathing meme.

Look, I'm going to say it right now: Nicolas Cage is an excellent actor. Ebert loved him. Multiple peers have praised him as one of -- if not the -- finest actors of his generation, and, every once in a while, he even shows it. Dude could have become a Daniel Day-Lewis, but, instead, gravitated toward high-octane action movies and, once shit hit the fan, the occasional turdstorm to temporarily patch the giant leak in his ever-depleting money silo. That's the difference between rich-people money problems and, say, me. If I lose what little money I have, I become poor, but, at least, get to keep a modicum of dignity. If they become poor, they're still richer than I will ever be, but run the risk of becoming butt monkeys for life.

Although Mr. Cage has clearly regained some of his dignity.

Oh, some people bounce back just fine. The word "murderer" has been hovering above Robert Durst's head for decades, and he seemed to do as fine as whatever chaos demon in charge of his brain can, before The Jinx changed the game. Everyone is sort of aware Sean Penn is a writhing pile of dicks sheathed in a vaguely man-shaped skin casing, yet he keeps racking up prestigious starring roles and awards like it ain't no thing. Actually, can someone explain that one to me? I've been wondering for years why karma hasn't just dropped him head-first into a fire-ant mound.

Remember Jennifer Lawrence? Of course you do, she's making smash-hit movies as we speak, and, chances are, she has a very bright future ahead of her ... no thanks to you. For the last couple of years, 2014 in particular, J-Law (shit, we actually loved her enough to give her one of those stupid nicknames) has been the toast of the entire world, especially the Internet. She's had it all: youth, lucrative and iconic roles, and a string of hit movies under her belt. Her clumsy-but-fun, everyday-cutie personality was more than enough to hide the fact that she sometimes behaved like a bit of a dick. As celebrities go, everyone agreed that she's the best.

So, of course, we had to break her.

Remember what the Internet adorably named "The Fappening?" Of course you do, it was last September, and you probably still have some of the images saved on your hard drive. The Internet unearthed a huge cache of Lawrence's (and a bunch of other female celebrities') private naked pics and gleefully turned the occasion into a worldwide jerk fest, in both senses of the word. For a while, the whole male online world went into a feeding frenzy, despite the fact that Lawrence made it pretty clear that she considers each and every person who seeks out the pictures a sex offender. Although she soon attempted to regain her media composure with a tasteful magazine-cover nude, she's been comparatively reclusive since, and, lately, the biggest headline you're likely to see about her is some fucking paparazzi shot where she walks her dog.

Getty Images/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Image
So, here's a dog.

I'm using J-Law (shit, now I'm using it) as my example because she's the most recent notable case of us gleefully tearing down a celebrity, but I guarantee that we, as a howling sea of individually intelligent animals that together make up a mindless mob known as the public, have done that to the overwhelming majority of high-profile people. We haphazardly toss dudes such as Kanye West and Hugh Grant into the Chris Brown/Alec Baldwin-populated pile, labeled "dickhead-rage monsters," because they once flipped out and backfisted one of the 10,000 paparazzi shoving lenses up their colons every waking hour. In their shoes, most of us would be collecting necklaces of paparazzo teeth within weeks -- don't pretend that you wouldn't.

As for Lawrence, I'll wager cash money that, in a dark corner of her mind, she'll always resent those people who were swearing they would never let anyone harm their precious favorite celebrity one second, and then queued up to look at pictures of her naughty bits the next. Will it make her more bitter or more careful about how much she'll give of herself to the world? It's too early to tell. But, I bet she'll never be the media darling she once was again. She now knows what we are.

And then there are the child stars. You've read what happened to Sawyer Sweeten, and you know he was far from the first and only successful child actor to go down that road. Let's ... let's not even visit the whirlpool of predictable madness and destructive behavior that is the life of a child star, actually. Cracked writer and actual former child star Mara Wilson already did it better than I ever could. Besides, I'm the wrong guy to talk about kids, anyway. I was crafted into full adulthood on a shipyard back in 1912.