Free the Hideously Boring Celebrity Tweets!

Why Hollywood should let stars tweet their innermost thoughts about the ice cream they're currently jonesing for.

Hollywood studios are apprently taking great pains to prevent actors and actresses from using social networking services such as Twitter. They don’t like the idea of celebrities disclosing confidential information, or revealing plot points to exciting new movies like Agent Cody Banks: Lost In Melbourne.

And celebrity publicists are also cowering in fear of Twitter’s power to instantly disseminate celebrities’ thoughts and/or pictures of the dog they just adopted and will soon pass off to an assistant for 24-hour care. They also don’t like the idea of celebrities fighting each other on Twitter, lest someone get hurt in the tweetfire.

Now, there are lots of good reasons for Hollywood to want to muzzle celebrities. After all, stars are idiots. I mean, we’re talking just brutally stupid human beings. Give them an outlet like Twitter that gives them instant attention from the world, and they’ll flock to it like it’s the one trailer on set that has cocaine in it.

But Hollywood is overlooking one very important aspect of all this celebrity tweeting, and that is that celebrities are boring tweeters, perhaps the most boring species of tweeters on the Earth.

Lots of people who don’t use Twitter assume it’s merely one of those “I’m having breakfast now” type wastes of time. Ah, but Twitter is so much more useful than that. The best tweeters use the microblogging service to do one of two things: 1) Link to something awesome, and 2) Live blog some breaking news item that has just occurred. That’s it. That’s the real use of Twitter. At its best, it’s a vehicle for sharing useful information.

Celebrities fail to grasp this, which is why their Twitter feeds are so god awful. No one with a brain in their head actively cares about whether or not Demi Moore and Perez Hilton don’t like each other. NO ONE LIKES PEREZ HILTON. I don’t need a Tweetoff to confirm such things.

Take a look at Jessica Simspon's terrible feed. Not a single external link to be found. Just the kind of useless drivel that keeps people far away from Twitter to begin with. Compare it to, say, Roger Ebert’s magnificent feed, which links to pretty much every cool thing in the universe. Advantage: Ebert.

Publicists need not worry about celebrities letting out juicy information, because stars today have already been trained from birth to talk like PR automatons. These are people BORN without spontaneity. Visit Conan O’Brien’s Twitter Tracker from some examples. If stars aren’t boring you to death on Twitter, they’re trying to sell you ProActiv. They shouldn’t restrict celebrity tweeting. They should give stars some sort of goodie bag when they tweet something anyone actually cares about.

So leave the celebrity tweeters alone, Hollywood. Don’t get so annoyed when they let the occasional cat out of the bag. If I were you, I’d be far more concerned with the fact that Twitter is allowing moviegoers to instantly warn each other to NOT attend your horrible, horrible movies. I’d rather read a million tweets from Demi Moore than watch Law Abiding Citizen.

Drew Magary is a co-founder of Kissing Suzy Kolber, a writer for Blue Star and Deadspin, and author of Men With Balls, now in bookstores.

Contact Us