Your Fave Celebs on Twitter

Back in the day, people hardly knew anything about their favorite movie and TV stars except what the news broadcast. Maybe it was an actor’s marriage, death, or new movie, but beyond that the public didn’t know too much about them. Random people sitting in their houses could marvel at them all they wanted, but most of the times they didn’t know how many kids they had, their diet regimens, or had even seen them on the red carpet at a movie premiere. There was mystery there. There was intrigue and the boundaries that were created made them seem larger than life. Now jump ahead from the early years of Clint Eastwood, Natalie Wood, and Audrey Hepburn, to the starts of today like Jessica Simpson, Demi Moore, and Kristen Stewart and we not only know how many kids they have (if any at all), but we’ve seen them; if they cheated we’ve not only heard about it, but we’ve seen the pictures to prove it; and not only do we know when they get married and divorced, but we know what they had for breakfast before they left for their wedding or before they received their divorce papers. Fans feel like they know them. They want to interact with them. And what better way to do that than with Twitter?

Gone are those days of mystery and they’ve been replaced by the era where people think they know the stars personally, despite the fact that they really don’t. Twitter is a huge factor that came after the whole nonexistent privacy thing began, but it definitely added fuel to the fire. But first, you need to understand how Twitter works, especially when it comes to people and their favorite celebrities.

First of all, for the majority of stars, Twitter is one big popularity contest. A lot of it started when Ashton Kutcher began a contest with another celeb to see who could get to 1 million followers. Kutcher threw an web cam party when he won. To me, it’s not the whole malarky of “connecting” with fans, as most celebrities like to say, but it’s more about seeing how many fans they actually have or how many people are going to follow them compared to others. Regardless of what anyone says, it’s really a win-win for both parties.

Fans feel like they’re reaching out and getting a taste of their lives, especially when celebrities post personal pictures of themselves at home or on their TV show or movie sets. No matter their personal interests, the fans end up feeling connected, like they’re in the inner circle, kissing the stars they follow right on the cheek or giving them a handshake with every tweet and every photo they post.

Twitter is also quite tricky when it comes to boundaries between celebrities and their fans. There’s quite the thin line there. Most stars use it to promote themselves or their personal projects, but some fans become annoyed by this even though that’s probably one of the main uses the celebrity signed up for their account in the first place. But self promotion is also something a lot of stars haven’t gotten the hang of being slick about. There are a lot of ways to get the word of your project out there without seeming too obnoxious. Then there are the pitiful souls who follow their favorite celebrities and for whatever reason automatically ends up believing that the person is their friend. Remember, you only think you know them, and that’s not vice versa. Over 100,000 people are following them and countless ones are sending them personal tweets and commenting under their individual tweets. I actually cringe when I read some random delusional girl that goes, “Hey! I love you! Plz follow me?” They’ve probably gotten 500 messages under yours that you can’t see asking the same thing of them, and if they’re only following 100 people at it is, I’ve got some bad news--it ain’t gonna happen.

It’s good and it’s bad, but it’s technology and it’s social networking and it’s always advancing and evolving. We love our celebrities, we love Twitter, and we’ve established a connection with it. And if there’s one thing we all have in common our tweets connect us all, one way or another, and if you get a tweet back, count yourself one of the few privileged ones.