Saturday, April 25, 2009

Is twitter the demise of celebrity gossip?

We are all nosey- we all derive pleasure, guilty or otherwise, from knowing what our favorite celebs are doing with themselves. Our need to know has created a multi billion dollar gossip industry which has fed the fashion industry (since so many people feel a need to dress like those celebs- fortunately, I’m not one of those people. LOL), beauty (fragrances), dining (anyone heard of Mr. Chow? Never even been on the left coast and I have) and the list goes on and on.

Twitter gives us all a chance to communicate with our favorite celebs in a very real way. Sometimes, they even talk back. It allows us to see their humanity but also to feel a part of their fabulous lives, although we clearly are not. Some of my favorite celebs: @estelleDarlings, @juneAmbrose, and @johncmayer. Estelle is hilarious, 100% real, June Ambrose is fabulous and does not mind clowning people on the street in the name of fashion and John Mayer is just randomly hilarious. The point is, outside of John Mayer, as he openly displays his humor with the paparazzi, how would I know anything outside of how these people look? I’ll tell you how- twitter.

Who needs gossip when you can get enough news to feed your need to know from the proverbial horse’s mouth? For example, one day I was perusing concrete loop. One of the popular features on the site is “Guess Who.” This particular “Guess Who” was Solange and I knew it without even thinking. Why? Because @solangeknowles posted a twit pic of herself before she went on stage so not only had I seen the outfit, I saw it WELL before it was on concrete loop. Concrete loop seems to be embracing twitter, saying that Solange’s twitter followers would know who it was, also noting that twitter was making their job easier, but I wonder are they worried?

Finally, are celebs that are not embracing the twitter phenomenon crazy? Ashton Kutcher said it best in his million follower quest… twitter allows us all to control exactly what we want to say and how we want to say it. So maybe, for people like Beyonce and Jay-Z, two of the most notoriously private celebs, it could be an opportunity to hide out loud. Tell us what you want us to know, and we’ll leave you alone, as long as it is something remotely interesting (I just unfollowed some utterly boring people earlier). Why allow gossip sites to speak for you when you can speak for yourself on twitter?