We live in a culture filled with individuals, brands, and corporations, all trying to get their time in the spotlight. Some are hoping for fame because they're backing a good cause. Some are trying to sell a product. Some are endorsing a celebrity, musician, artist, or otherwise noteworthy individual. Regardless of the purpose, publicity as a whole is about helping consumers to talk about your brand. We're ALL in the race to get others to talk about us.
Our new social media channels (must I mention them again? Sigh.) Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and the general blogosphere, among others, are filled with millions of people all talking or posting about whatever it is that interests them. With every insightful, interesting user, each of these sites also offers a robot, a stream of spam, or a real person who babbles about nothing.
Given our country's worship and idolization of celebrities, it comes as no surprise that social media can be compared to each citizen's attempt to get a little famous.
I have long been a supporter of the way networking sites allow normal people to interact with brands, celebrities, and other people or organizations they admire. How cool is in that I could write a tweet mentioning Perez Hilton, and he would respond? This happened to a friend of mine. Another friend of mine was able to correspond with an athlete she admires -- about dry cleaning!
There has to be a tradeoff to having instant connections to the celebs we worship. CNN suggests that our obsession with fame is fueled by the ability to contact celebrities, and then we spend the rest of our time on social media trying to produce the same effects as we experienced once when we wrote on Taylor Lautner's Facebook Fan page, and a representative of his responded to us personally.
Social media is the tool that enables us to continue our celebrity obsession, and by interacting with the stars we admire, we get to feel a little famous ourselves.
I can't really judge, though, since I often tweet @johncmayer and PRAY he responds.
I have to wonder how much of a celebrity's social media realm is handled by the actual celebrity. I think celebrities are good about actually being the ones Tweeting, but other uses of social media are questionable. So, while it may be cool to get a shout out from what seems to be your favorite celebrity, you should also bear in mind that it might not be them after all.
ReplyDeleteI am no stranger to tweeting to celebrities and hoping for a response. But I read an article on Mashable a few days ago that was about a Twitter user who threatened to kill his cat if Miley Cyrus didn't return to the Twitter world. Miley's response was that she didn't like Twitter and thought no one should use it. To the kitty threatener: I think the word obsession doesn't even begin to cover your mental status. To Miley: Big mistake on your part. Social media is the way to stay connected to fans, turning your back on it won't do you any good.
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