I think that she knows.

I've been watching old videos of Britney performing at the VMAs, and I'm sad.  I'm so sad that this girl, who was once so vital, energetic, athletic, was basically chewed up and spit back out.  No one ever prepared her for adulthood -- not that that's an excuse, but she just never had a chance.  We kinda wanted her to fail, because she represented so much of what is wrong with the American music industry.  I was always ranting about how Britney got to be a famous singer even though she (empirically) couldn't sing any better than about 90% of the girls at any given karaoke bar.  But she did have talent -- not that she was such an amazing dancer, either, because she wasn't.  But she could command a stage, better than any other performer of her generation.  She wasn't the prettiest girl, and she wasn't the most talented girl.  But she had some sort of indefinable star quality.  I don't know if that charisma is worth the gazillion dollars that got thrown at her.  Probably not.  But it was obvious about 5 years ago that this was where the girl was going to end up, and we all watched, and we waited.  Britney's entire life was a car crash in slow motion, and we rubbernecked for the better part of a decade.

This is my favorite fan video of the day.