Celebrities on Twitter

I have long eschewed all things “reality” in pop culture, because it hurts me in my heart to see people sacrifice their dignity for attention, or to act like rabid dogs at on the scent of another’s fame. Long before reality shows, I’d avert my eyes and hum to myself when my grandmother would watch Entertainment Tonight and skip to the big crossword puzzle in her weekly tabloid. If there was anything I didn’t want, it was to have to hear the real voices and opinions of actors and musicians, or the fake news of their comings and goings. I like my proscenium firewalled, thank you very much.  Our bread and circuses may have gone Wonder and ANTM, but the same mean spirit possesses people as much now as in gladitorial Rome, and I didn’t want to fall into the great malevolent American pastime of passive judgement.

Twitter has turned my head in so many ways, and one of them is a new affinity I feel with various celebrities because they twitter in the exact same way as my friends and colleagues. They are big dorks excited by technology and interaction just like anyone else, and many are not afraid to be themselves in this public sphere. They promote themselves no more or less than anyone else I know, and just like us, they are seizing opportunities to participate in good works and political issues, and without being shielded by handlers or distorted by yellow journalism.

Right now I’m following two actors who shocked the heck out of me with their non-acting efforts:

RainnWilson whom we all know and love from The Office, is a frequent twitterer and is using his fame as a means for energizing debate around spirituality and creativity, and has started a great new site called SoulPancake. Religion is not my favorite of subjects (mostly due to those who feel that spirituality does not exist without religion, and religion used as justification for bigotry), but creating a safe fun place for youths and others to talk about having purpose and hopefully tearing down some destructive approaches of religion is fine by me. He tweeted about his appearance on Oprah’s Soul Series and when I visited the link I found myself riveted to hear an actor (or anyone, really)  talking thoughtfully about religion and creativity and not sounding delusional or daft. He also tweets a lot about his delight in his young son, and plenty of LOL-sequiters. In short, he sounds just like all my other geek friends on Twitter.

When social media consultant Tracy Sheridan advised me to check on Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter stream, my skepticism was impossible to mask. I knew little about the actor beyond a movie that I *still* regret being talked into paying to see (Dude, Where’s My Car?), and a tv show that thrived on fear, anxiety, and humiliation (Punk’d). OK, I did think that Guess Who? took a brave stab at addressing racial bigotry in a social context that is almost never honestly attempted in entertainment, but did not really give Kutcher credit for that choice. I had no idea how fully he embraced the social medium, and was surprised to find a thoughtful, frequent twitterer whose tweets ranged from challenging himself to authentic experiences outside his comfort zone (I appreciate conscious growth however and in whomever it manifests) to discussing social issues to random observations, all with what appears to be a total lack of fear around interacting openly with whomever lobs a question or snarky comment at him, also using his network to inform more people about charities and causes that are important to him. Again, just like everyone else I know.

I think there is something significant and delightfully subversive in the fact that people living in such a manufactured world, as far as traditional media goes, are able to so easily bypass the paparazzi who are paid the exploit and often misrepresent them. Paparazzi exist because of fans and anti-fans obsessive need for further connection with their fantasies. What happens when they are confronted with the real person?