Some of the more attentive blog followers out there might remember that a while back our twitter coverage featured a piece on the ways in which Twitter was re-shaping the celebrity sphere, namely the way in which it was opening up a whole new media forum for fans of non glossy magazine-featured celebrities to nonetheless observe and participate in their favourite celebs private lives, and daily exploits. You may not see Stephen Fry drunkenly stumbling out of a limo in a Heat centerfold – but you can access his day to day activities via the medium of twitter for example…
Well, there’s obviously also some quite serious downsides of being a media celebrity – which it seems now also extend to those who, though famous generally, only really live this celebrity 24-hour media coverage dimension through twitter. Nothing illustrates this better than the recent episode in which one of the UK’s favourite ‘twitterers’ Stephen Fry considered quitting the social network in response to receiving harsh criticisms and abuse from some readers/followers.
Now, anybody who has been even slightly in the public eye for more than a few seconds will surely know that it is inevitable that some people will always find something unpleasant to say about you, or that you will have to accept a pretty considerable lack of control over how you are presented in the media – thus perhaps further fuelling the unpleasantness/gossip etc. However, for ‘non-traditional’ celebs (i.e. those who though famous, don’t appear splashed across 20 national publications a day) this is one perhaps unexpected consequence of the newly found additional level of celebrity which twitter is seemingly adding to their public profiles.
What will happen next with Stephen Fry’s particular twitter fate remains to be decided by Fry himself, and perhaps also the manner in which some of his followers also interact with him in the future. As a fan of his I personally hope that he re-discovers his passion for twitter as he has greatly enriched the content available through it. Secondly, it will no doubt be fascinating to observe how the celebrity culture and online media landscape continues to alter as a consequence of the evolution and growth of twitter and, as always, we’ll keep you posted…
Dejan Levi