Respect Authority

The Kutchers: a private people

Leave it to Ashton Kutcher to fuck everything up. 

Less than eight hours after news surfaced that tech start-up Twitter was in negotiations for a tweet-based reality television show, celebrities that include Ashton Kutcher and …Ashton Kutcher, lambasted the idea, saying he’d pull his Twitter feed before allowing himself to “get stalked.”

In a statement, Twitter and its production partners — the geniuses behind reality stalwarts like The Biggest Loser — said the new show would put “ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format.” What that means is anyone’s guess, but I personally take it as some sort of “Find The Celebrity” Amazing Race type show, an idea that didn’t sit well with either Ashton or Demi Moore, who also said she’d cease tweeting if the show came to pass as described. 

It’s not that I can’t understand celebrities wanting to dodge the limelight sometimes. Were I any moderate degree of famous, I’d probably invest in dark sunglasses and ill-fitting hats as well, parading around the city in disguises until some determined photographer catches me buying a family-sized pack of miniature Hershey bars at Duane Reade. But we’re not talking about normal celebrities — we’re talking about Ashton and Demi. We’re talking about a couple that purposefully got on the Twitter boat early, sharing with fans nonsensical personal details about Ashton’s movie, or Demi’s oral surgery, or Ashton’s affinity for his wife’s naked ass (see above). We’re talking about two people who saw a social networking tool that does nothing except promote minute-by-minute life-sharing, and jumped on it. 

So really Ashton, what’s the worst a Twitter-based show could do? Surprise famous people? Make them look silly? Embarass celebrities by having would-be comedians secretly film them living their day-to-day lives and then freak them out with some sort of highly orchestrated prank?

You’re right — sounds pretty awful.

These two videos have singlehandedly — or I guess dual-handedly — forced me to officially accept and appreciate Twitter, particularly Rainn Wilson’s feed. You win, excessive new social networking technology. This time.

So I’ve discovered a way to accept Twitter. 

To clarify, I fought long and hard for this. I’ve been vehemently anti-Twitter since the get-go, finding it hard to drop my perception of the social-nonsense site as a means for people to share unnecessary information with their pathetic and woefully dependent friends. So it was with both trepidation and no small amount of resentment that I bit the bullet and signed up as part of a broader obligation to adapt new marketing techniques at work. Since then I have been trying to find a way to accept Twitter the way my grandfather only recently accepted DVDs - because eventually I’m just going to have to. Read More ›

I know I’ve made it no small secret that I hate Twitter with the fire of one thousand extra-hot suns. I find it hard to suppress my constant urges to lambaste people who insist on being so perpetually plugged-in that they’re willing to receive status updates on everything from bloggers’ adventures to what their friends are eating for dinner. But, even if I were to set aside my personal vendetta against this digital downfall of mankind, this would still be ridiculous.

Dunkin’ Donuts this week became the latest brand to join Twitter, and will now provide hardcore donut-lovers with, yes, updates about special offers, but more importantly (according to DD) with the opportunity to “connect and have a dialogue with or about the brand.” Because really, if there’s one thing I feel my online presence is lacking, it’s the ability to send mindless tweets about my donut preferences. I’m pretty sure this would yield just one tweet from me, which I would therefore be forced to send every hour, on the hour. It would read: “Jelly-filled, fuck yes” or I suppose, to get technical about it, “Kira is Jelly-filled, fuck yes,” which actually takes on an entirely new meaning.

This article doesn’t give any actual examples of tweets from Dunkin’ Donuts, or from rival Starbucks, who jumped on the Twitter bandwagon faster than you could say skim soy mocha latte cappuccino, which leaves me with a very serious quandary. Do I sign up for Twitter simply to receive these messages and subsequently mock them in this public forum?

The answer is no. Sometimes you don’t need to see to believe. I believe this is probably the dumbest Twitter feed in the history of Twitter, and if I could very easily spend my entire life never seeing a single tweet about glazed donuts or the newest featured smooth-jazz CD, well that would be as good as hot coffee on a cold day. Thanks but no thanks.

Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey was “promoted” to chairman today, leaving co-founder and chief product officer Evan Williams to take the reigns as leading executive officer.

What this really means is a bunch of pathetic losers just got the message:

Jack is no longer CEO ;-) 2 minutes ago from really expensive mobile