The Celebrity Twitter Mystique

It’s an amazing phenomenon that happens on Twitter: one celebrity announces that another celebrity is now on Twitter and multitudes quickly flock to follow them. I’m not disparaging or mocking this, as I do it myself with the celebs I’m interested in, but I can’t help but wonder how perceptions form based on this.

I can’t help but smile when a new-celeb-twitterer suddenly discovers that they have thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of people sign up within a day or two of them joining the service. I’m sure it’s a measured appreciation. Sure, you get the ego-boost of knowing a lot of people want to hear what you say, be it inspirationally profound or appallingly mundane. On the other hand, you also get a Twitter feed inundated by tweets from your fans: some silly, some sublime, and some disturbing. It’s definitely one of those giveth/taketh scenarios.

Still, the followers are there. That tends to mean influence. Sometimes that means too much influence, as some celebs with well over a million followers have learned that when they post a link to a site, if that site isn’t incredibly robust, it’s going to crash. I, with my (typically) fewer than 300 followers, don’t have that as a concern.

I can’t help but wonder, though, if nearly as many celebs would be as enthusiastic with Twitter if they’d actually had to build their fan base like others have. (And before you yell “sour grapes”, my following is sufficiently small–but appreciated–that I don’t think I can be included with those who have actually grown a significant following.) Sure, some would be tweeting away simply because they are more geeky than some would assume. Others…well, I’m not so sure.

I’d love to see some research specifically targeting celebs about their twittering. We know that some do work it–posting many tweets, retweets, and whatnot. Some are mind-numbing with their “Woke up” and “Going to sleep” output. Most are somewhere in the middle. I’d love to see a comparison of the number of followers vs a celeb’s Q rating (both with the general public and the more geeky twitteratti) vs a celeb’s Twitter-Q (or quality of tweets) rating. What sort of correlation is there?

As for me, I rest in my relative anonymity. Sometimes I tweet a lot, sometimes I tweet not quite as much (though some might think it’s still a lot), but I’m usually found spewing forth my usual stew of thoughts and interests. And I get to appreciate each and every one of my followers who follows me for content. It confirms in spades that I’m not a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, but it also means I don’t have the responsibilities that the famous have when so many are tuned-in to them. Like so many things in life, it’s a double-edged sword for all concerned (which reminds me of Lilly’s confession to Mia in The Princess Diaries, but I digress).

In any event, I’ll continue to watch with fascination (and sometimes participation) as celebs join Twitter and then poof, they have an embarrassment of followers. It does little on my end except maybe add a few tweets per week to my usual output.