Celebutwits: The Janet Jackson Rule of Social Media

Twitter, it has been said, is like an enormous cocktail party. You can eavesdrop, you can converse, you can bore, you can rant, you can impress, and you can…do the opposite. And you can, at least theoretically, meet anyone in the room.

Studded among the plebes on Twitter are the few, the proud, the celebrities, roaming free without so much as a velvet rope to hide behind. It wouldn’t do for the world to throw a party and for them to sit it out at home, watching old Cagney and Lacey reruns and grooming the Shih Tzu.

While the premise on Twitter is that the conversations are literally authentic to the individual, the reality is that in celebrity accounts the posts are often written by PRs or PAs or other initialed representatives of the almighty Image. This is understandable, because while social media participation is currently de rigeur, the ability to sing tunefully or act plausibly when given a script does not necessarily imply the ability to write extemporaneously with grace and charm.

To say the least.

Lindsay Lohan Crazytweets

And one habit that some have retained from the lessons their flacks drilled into them or from watching Madonna’s career or from lying around the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel taking notes is: Never Be Seen Talking To Anyone Less Important Than You.

Which leads to a peculiar pyramidal structure in which everyone, it seems, is speaking to Lindsay Lohan and she speaks only to God. And her dealer.

Which has led me to develop something I call the Janet Jackson Rule of Social Media: if the celebrity in question never @’s, wall posts, or blog comments on, to, or about anyone less fame-tastic than Janet Jackson, they aren’t worth a Follow.

Image via Wikipedia

The Janet Jackson Rule of Twitter

If the celeb or gossip monger never talks to anyone but celebrities directly (“what do you think of X” does not count, it’s just @ baiting, so they can later say “see how involved my public is?” That’s right, you’re not an individual to them, you’re “their public”) then the gossip monger is not interested in Twitter as a platform for connecting with people s/he doesn’t already know, unless they are famous. Additionally, odds are good they’re only @’ing these people so you’ll think they’re friends; it’s a social media namedrop.

Since this assoholic behaviour is on display to the higher-up celebs as well, let’s hope it gets the suckups and “talk to the iPhone”-ers shunned.

Bonnie Fuller is the prime example of this: while pretending to be spontaneous on Twitter, she never @’s anyone less prominent than Janet Jackson, lest she be mistaken for someone who talks to, rather than orders around, the Little People.

Bonnie Fuller, for those who don’t know (and why would you know?) used to be a magazine editor: she started at Cosmo and worked her way down, up, or sideways to US Weekly, and from thence to the web.

The best celebrity counter-example is John Cusack, Shockozulu, who picks people to retweet or interact with simply on the basis of how interesting their words are to him. John Cusack is the Wild Man of Twitter. His twitter stream gives the impression of having been thumbed on a prototype iPhone stolen from Steve Jobs’ dreams, in the dark, under a table in a nightclub on the dark side of the moon, on which are resting several tumblers half-filled with whiskey and around which are sitting Cusack, the Ghost of Hunter S. Thompson, a French Legionnaire who’s gone AWOL, and a Hot Girl from the Ukraine Who is an Artist, Wears Catsuits, and Speaks Only in Ancient Phrygian.

And, contrary to most advice about Twitter, those are the kinds of people I prefer to follow.

John Cusack will Play Anything

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