Why some celebs overshare on Twitter
1/11
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Timothy A. Clary / AFP-Getty Images By David A. Graham
It's easy to sympathize with stars who don't want to be harried by paparazzi all the time. But it gets much easier to sneer at those same paparazzi-hating celebs when they take to Twitter to offer a bit more than we needed to know about their private business. The latest example: Ashton Kutcher, a man known today mostly for having a lot of Twitter followers, is outraged—outraged!—about people prying into his private life. Of course, he didn't have any problem with tweeting a picture of his wife's rear end to the nearly 6 million people who follow his Twitter feed. What gives?
Celebrities have always wanted attention--up to a point, says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. But what might seem like hypocrisy is partly because Twitter comes "straight from the Id." "It's kind of like the casual e-mails we send—an hour later you think, 'Wow, I really should have thought about that before I sent that,'" Thompson says. "We get into trouble in a microcosmic scale. All these stars are doing this on a greater scale." Of course, Twitter isn't the problem--it's just the latest medium. Back in 2002, Fox News was pondering whether the new celebrity "Web logs" offered too much information. But it's certainly made oversharing—-and hypocrisy—a little easier, because it's so immediate and unfiltered. Here are a few of the more egregious offenders.
http://www.newsweek.com/photo/2010/...ities-who-overshare-on-twitter.html?GT1=43002
1/11
Previous Image Next Image
Timothy A. Clary / AFP-Getty Images By David A. Graham
It's easy to sympathize with stars who don't want to be harried by paparazzi all the time. But it gets much easier to sneer at those same paparazzi-hating celebs when they take to Twitter to offer a bit more than we needed to know about their private business. The latest example: Ashton Kutcher, a man known today mostly for having a lot of Twitter followers, is outraged—outraged!—about people prying into his private life. Of course, he didn't have any problem with tweeting a picture of his wife's rear end to the nearly 6 million people who follow his Twitter feed. What gives?
Celebrities have always wanted attention--up to a point, says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. But what might seem like hypocrisy is partly because Twitter comes "straight from the Id." "It's kind of like the casual e-mails we send—an hour later you think, 'Wow, I really should have thought about that before I sent that,'" Thompson says. "We get into trouble in a microcosmic scale. All these stars are doing this on a greater scale." Of course, Twitter isn't the problem--it's just the latest medium. Back in 2002, Fox News was pondering whether the new celebrity "Web logs" offered too much information. But it's certainly made oversharing—-and hypocrisy—a little easier, because it's so immediate and unfiltered. Here are a few of the more egregious offenders.
http://www.newsweek.com/photo/2010/...ities-who-overshare-on-twitter.html?GT1=43002
