May 22, 2009
Why do people follow celebrities on Twitter?
I promise I don’t write about Twitter all the time, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot (for work and fun) recently.
So, celebrities on Twitter. We’ve all heard about them, and we might even follow one or two. But why?
Some simple reasons:
- Fan of them/their work generally
- Like getting updates from them about what they’re doing/thinking (e.g. like a direct fan newsletter)
- Interested in a particular project they’re currently working on (e.g. filming a movie)
- Like cutting out the filter of gossip sites, news organisations etc and getting insight or news direct from source
- Like the potential proximity of creating a relationship/conversation with them (albeit one-sided - but it could be more at some point)
But I’ve got another hypothesis: could it be that (potentially in addition to any of the above) having a celebrity’s updates appear in your twitter consumption stream, along with your friends and other contacts, makes them more real/closer/more human because suddenly you cannot fail to be aware that they are sharing a time-context (which they must have before, but all your consumption of celeb updates had previously been mediated through the temporal displacement of publishing, broadcasting or other media)?
Just thinking.
Additional resources:
- Celebrities on Twitter, and why you shouldn’t follow them
- Are celebrities causing Twitter to evolve or devolve?
- Celebrity Twitter overkill
http://books.google.com/books?id=mCw-AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=celebrity+adoration+sociology&source=bl&ots=xWN1O7ZnVc&sig=1QejkT4fIEgc8PmVFk_zKW2yhZ0&hl=en&ei=zXkWSsbULaO1-Qb_hpzmDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PPA16,M1
“In 1956, Horton and Wohl, characterised the media-audience relationship as a form of para-social interaction. They see fandom as a surrogate relationship, one that inadequately imitates normal relationships.”
I’m not a bot, I studied sociology and we had a whole module on the cult of celebrity. I have more quotes…
Piercing the PR bubble is a big reasons. I follow Jonathan Woodgate, Spurs defender, purely because his tweets are often so inane they offer a more ‘real’ insight into Premiership football than the press. After a recent 0-0 draw with Everton his entire tweet commentary on the weekend was how nice it was to have proper Northern fish and chips. This casual social commentary has a relationship value, as Fluff says above, because it’s the kind of minor aside shared as a consequence of closeness rather than as a desire to create content.
Other celebs - David Quantick, Armando Iannucci - I follow for the same reason I consume their mainstream content, because they’re funny.
I have an additional reasons for following some celebs. Reading Peache Geldof or Heather Mills’ Tweets is like watching a truly cringeworthy sitcom. They’re enraging but somehow I can’t seem to unfollow them.
Oh dear that has several typing errors in it.
I have an additional reason for following some celebs: reading Peaches Geldof or Heather Mills’ tweets is like watching a truly cringe-worthy sitcom. They’re enraging but somehow I can’t seem to unfollow them.
There. That’s better.
What a co-incidence, I felt that exact same thing that you mentioned towards the end of your post.Watching update of your favorite celebrity along with your friends in your timeline(or replies page) makes you feel(though virtually) closer to them.
Agreed it’s a surrogate relationship in starting but it might evolve to even a personal friendship for a few after some time but it’s all about feeling closer/connected to them psychologically.
Also, even a @reply from your favorite celebrity can make your day
I too have been grappling with the celebrity follow and find myself a little disturbed by it all. I follow a few and have unfollowed a lot more after my initial curiousity (Kirstie Alley for one, was saying nothing worth reading 50 times a minute). What I have a concern about is the followers who have a desperate need to be recognised by a famous person, someone who will give them validation and a sense of connection. Yes twitter is breaking down barriers and allowing some direct access to their fans to dispute falsehoods in the press and provide an insight into their lives. The downside is that some people now think they have a direct line to the famous and are in desperate need of that contact so they feel better about themselves. This is evident in the number of tweets I’ve seen along the lines of “Can you let me know if you can view my comments please?” - it feels a bit like, “look at me, look at me, I’m friends with a famous person”. I’ve seen so many people on twitter who ONLY follow celebrities and have less than 5 followers of their own and their entire tweet stream is messages to the famous that will either never get read and are even less likely to be replied to.
A lot of this is probably due to the fact that we live in an instant noodle society and though clearly a lot of what I said is generalisation and at 9am on Sunday morning I’m not quite expressing myself correctly it’s probably still got some half decent point in there somewhere.
The answer might be… because they don’t have anything more exciting in their life, fantasy replaces fact. Like sitcoms. eventuallt like simstim in Gibson books where people jack-in to a character in a sitcom and experience their experiences. The future is looking bleak, people.
That’s a good insight Meg - there’s definitely a degree of virtual elbow-rubbing that comes with following a celeb on Twitter. There’s also the fact some celebs’ Twitter feeds are just genuinely entertaining (and this is essentially brokenbottleboy’s point above). @warrenellis and @johncleese are just funny. Though you could make the argument that those two are writers, and not just “why is this person a celebrity, again?” celebrities in the style of Paris Hilton.