James Van Der Beek is glad he’s not a teen idol today, said Patti Greco in Vulture.com. In 1998, the then-20-year-old actor became an overnight star, thanks to the success of TV’s Dawson’s Creek. Crowds of screaming girls started following him everywhere he went. But unlike the current crop of teen idols, Van Der Beek could unwind in clubs and at parties without fearing that someone might snap a compromising cellphone photo and post it online. “In 1998, nobody had cameras on their cellphones,” he says. “You could do the stupid things you do when you’re 20 years old and go, ‘Wow, that was dumb. I’m not going to do that again.’ It didn’t follow you around for the next year of your life.” Still, Van Der Beek thinks there is one benefit to this invasive new technology: Celebrities no longer have to deal with fans armed with disposable, windup cameras. “You’d get some poor 13-year-old girl who’s shaking, she’s [posing for] the picture with you, and [her] dad goes, ‘One, two, three!’—but he has neglected to wind the camera. The poor girl just wants to crawl in a hole and disappear. I gave [so many] tutorials to dads in front of mortified girls on how to use those disposable cameras. So thank God for the iPhone in that respect.”
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