I’ve had writer’s block the past couple of days and couldn’t for the life of me come up with interesting blog content. Guess it was post-holiday fog or something. Then a few hours ago, I clicked on a link from my Austin friend Wesley Faulkner and was hit square in the face with this image.
The title of the article Wesley’s referring to? “America’s Tweethearts.” Oh this should be fun.
The author of this Vanity Fair piece, Vanessa Grigoriadis, seems to be living in an alternate Twitter land occupied by the sort of people who sit front and center at fashion shows. The “twitter speak” she’s throwing around is completely foreign to me. I’ve never even heard the word ‘twilebrity,’ a concept she’s made the primary focus of the article. And ‘tweeple’? Seriously? Are people really saying this with a straight face?
The rest of the piece goes downhill from there. The five women pictured above are publicists and actresses and “social strategists” and, at least as Ms. Grigoriadis has portrayed them, have the collective depth of a frying pan. It’s an incredibly insulting, vapid piece and, were I a reader unfamiliar with Twitter, I’d run screaming from the service immediately.
According to a study of 1.5 million tweets, released this year by Oxford University Press, the words “cool,” “awesome,” “wow,” and “yay” are among the most common on Twitter—and it’s a safe guess that most twilebrities use them as freely as Laguna High freshmen. Just like high school, Twitter is an enormous popularity contest.
Well no, actually, it isn’t. As someone who has more than my share of issues with Twitter, I’m a little surprised at my strong reaction to this piece. Theoretically, I should be happy it’s being spun as a frivolous, shallow service. But instead, I’m annoyed that thousands of vastly more interesting people and concepts were ignored in lieu of Stefanie Michaels: “Facebook is just way too slow. I can’t deal with that kind of deep engagement.” You said a mouthful there, sister.
And yeah, I’ll go ahead and say it: dear GOD mainstream magazines, when will you stop being afraid of smart women? I guess was hoping that when major media decided to focus on Twitter’s mainstream adoption, it’d be a little more multi-faceted than this. But then again, I’m known for my naivete.
Being smart generally makes you attractive. Being attractive does not generally make you smart.
One would assume that some of these mags are run by smart women, right? Would they not want to highlight their own, or is there a fear of becoming a dry Ms. Magazine clone? (BTW – I used to love that magazine in college, but haven’t read it in a while)
Louis – it’s definitely the latter. Though I LOVE that you used to read Ms. : )
I agree with you completely Louis and Carla.