This is a good rule of thumb for all celebrities on Twitter, really. Because we have the same access to (for example) CM Punks tweets as we do that guy we went to college with or that girl from the gym, the temptation is to treat them as if theyre old friends or acquaintances and regularly fire off mildly sarcastic rejoinders to tweets we dont agree with. Theyre not your mates or your drinking buddies. They dont know you from Adam or Eve, and they may have anything from fifty thousand to two million followers. When they check their mentions, amongst the dozens that are fawning and flaming, trolling and flirting and even threatening, theyll probably see that about half of the rest are smart alec strangers with off-the-cuff 140-character tweets disputing their informed opinion on a subject. The occasional query, the odd quibble - thats fine, especially if you dont try to get yourself over by being witty at their expense. We often treat Twitter and similar social media platforms - like the comments sections of websites - as our own personal outlets to get across the persona we want to project online: someone smart, informed, funny, that kind of thing. If you do that with someone famous on Twitter, the best case scenario is that theyll ignore you. The worst case scenario is that theyll have a spare thirty seconds to pick the worst offenders and take out some frustration by shredding them in public and then blocking them. And you cant really blame them. Would you put up with a hundred or more people trying to get a rise out of you every single day?
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
