When Conan O'Brian is bored...what does he do? Simple. He creates a Twitter account.
It's hard to believe that a TV show star as famous as Conan O'Brien could ever be "bored." But after his exit from The Tonight Show on NBC, Conan decided to finally create an account that would undoubtedly call attention to the masses. Within two weeks, he already gathered a fan base of over half a million followers. Even though people flocked to his Twitter account, he did the opposite. He refused to follow anyone else.
Until today! And just who is this special someone?
Conan just publicly announced that he has decided to follow someone. In fact, his random action could only warrant a random following -- and that's what he did. He tweeted “I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.“
And without a doubt, it has. Sarah Killen, a girl from Michigan, gathered over a thousand followers just a few minutes after Conan tweeted about her. This number will most likely skyrocket by the hour.
Case in point: In an update following the TechCrunch post, a few minutes later, Killen had 2,600 followers.
What does this mean for society? Is this what Twitter has become? I still believe that Twitter has some positive aspects, such as an easy tool for information dissemination, but this is a good example of why I was so deterred from using Twitter in the first place. It's just a joke to some, and the ones who actually tweet meaningful posts are often overshadowed by the big names.
Well, Conan IS a comedian...he's SUPPOSED to tell jokes and be funny. The thing about Twitter is that you make of it what you want. You don't have to follow Conan. You can just follow the people and topics that interest you (ie, food and foodies are HUGE on Twitter). Sure, Conan and Ashton and other big celebrities will always garner bigger followings. But that doesn't negate the meaningfulness of lesser known thought leaders.
ReplyDeleteGotta love Conan. I'm not sure if his efforts aren't more calculated than simply being 'bored.' He's smart to foster his passionate fan base while he's in between TV gigs.
ReplyDelete@Julie: good points!