that awkward moment when the celebrity you follow isn’t actually the celebrity you follow…
Do you ever wonder how celebrities find the time to balance their incredibly busy work lives while constantly managing their social media accounts? Well, apparently some celebrities aren’t actually behind the masks of their accounts…
Since most of the A-list celebrities people follow on social media are so consumed by their fulltime jobs in the realm of Hollywood, they basically have no choice but to hire an assistant to manage their social media accounts. With the fast paced society we live in today that happens to strongly revolve around technology — namely social media platforms — in order for these celebrities to stay relevant and gain higher statuses of fame, they need to keep up with their social media postings. In an article published in 2014 titled “That’s not a celebrity you’re following on Twitter, it’s an assistant”, author Chris Plante exposes the fact that celebrities themselves are not running their own accounts. Plante uses concrete examples to demonstrate just how true this really is. The first celebrity he uses to illustrate this claim of falsity is Adam Levine, the lead singer of the band Maroon 5. He states that Adam Levine tweeted (from an iPhone) promoting the Samsung Galaxy Note 4…ironic, is it not? What’s even more ironic and hypocritical is that Adam Levine wasn’t even the one who posted this to his Twitter account — it was an (iPhone-using) assistant!
As I have mentioned before is other blog posts about social media and celebrity, “In the past couple years, some celebrities have parlayed their fame and social media accounts into micro-media companies. Their handles are self-contained streams of self-promotion, brand management, and empty aphorism” (Plante). Due to the evolution of social media resulting in the fact that these platforms have transformed into mini brand companies that are designed to generate an income. This alone, has become a fulltime job that calls for the hiring of peronal assistants, management companies, and even interns. According to Plante, in order to recognize when a celebrities account is being managed by another party, you can spot “their 2:1 ratio of ad speak and tween slang, like their author’s sprinkling salt on bland food.” However, even though these tweets might appear to be personable, well-worded, and coming right from the celebrity’s fingers, they aren’t. And it’s kind of awkward, to be honest. Adequately worded by Plante, “We’re at this uncomfortable moment in which social media companies masquerade as living, breathing humans. People are companies. Companies are people. And both combine in the most boring Twitter accounts on the internet.” Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to know whether or not you are following the actual celebrity, or just some insignificant intern (no offense to all the social media interns out there). There needs to be a better sense of transparency about who exactly is behind the mask of these celebrity accounts. We follow celebrities via social media because it does generate a feeling of connectedness…but now, this feeling seems to slowly be shattering.
