To tweet or not to tweet?
In my opinion the strangest yet funniest thing ever to come out of the internet is twitter. For me personally it’s great fun. I’m able to ‘talk’ to people I know and I do so on a regular basis. Some of them I’ve met, others I consider to be my online pals. Meeting them would be amazing but also not that easy since some of them live on an entirely different continent. But I digress.
When it comes to celebrities though, it’s a whole different ballgame. Because where else can you sing a celebrity’s praises or tell them how much they suck without any consequences? Yes, of course, they will eventually block your ass if you piss them off enough but that’s not that bad. You just set up a new account and, pronto, you can go on insulting them. And that’s the crux of the matter. The anonymity that the internet provides changes everyone’s behavior. Most of the time not to the better, I’m afraid. You may only have 140 characters at your disposal to say what you want to say but it is enough to gush over your favorite actor/actress but also to tell this or that person that he/she is the biggest twat ever. And it’s so easy to do that. Because you aren’t able to witness their immediate response you don’t really care how that person feels. They are a celebrity and should be able to deal with whatever we throw at them. But we conveniently forget that celebrities are people too. And people are people, no matter if they live a life in the limelight or choose to deliver the mail. We are all in this together, and we all have feelings that can be hurt.
As much as I like twitter, I think celebrities should think twice about getting an account and if they do they should develop a very thick virtual skin because they will be considered fair game and they might get shot in the process. Sometimes through no fault of their own but most of the time - alas, we live in the information age where it is common to hunt down VIPs to let everyone know what they are doing at this very moment - they bring it on themselves just by being human. We so-called fans as a collective group still tend to idealize celebrities, put them on a pedestal. But they are not superhuman, they are indeed just human, just people like you and me. And they make mistakes. As we all do.
So, my hopes for the future are…worldpeace…ehm, sorry, I got distracted :D… to paraphrase that Elvis song: a little less information, a little more privacy.
Peace out!