Being on Twitter is the latest status symbol amongst Indian Celebrities and tweeting is the latest pass time. Some 200 odd Actors, Directors, Singers, Politicians, Cricketers, Business Tycoons and Journalists are now on Twitter. Wannabe celebrities are also following them. I do follow some of them (after dumping many) and find most of them are quite superficial. Here is how they tweet-
- Specifically for Bollywood celebs – wake up and say Good Morning – usually it is at noon time in India and most people are busy tackling their daily challenges. Say Good Night when it is time to wake up. I understand Bollywood works odd hours but why subject poor fans with your erratic habits.
- They don’t like brevity and think Twitter founders made a big mistake by restricting tweets to 140 characters. As a results they send series of Tweets causing a Tsunami on the Twitter pages of their followers.
- They follow very limited number of people (average 30-40) – it clearly indicates that it is a broadcasting medium rather than something that they learn from. Very happy to respond to fans who go ga-ga about them but ignore (or get irritated with) Tweeple who present a counter-point-of-view. And mind you they all boast about open dialogue, freedom of speech etc etc. – specifically the celeb journalists.
- Most frequently abused three words are ‘Love you all’. It irritates me because it is such a fake and superficial statement. I’m yet to see any one of them coming out and demonstrating love for their fans.
I think Twitter has become the new page 3 for most of these publicity hungry celebs. There are exceptions and I do find some of them to be genuine- at least they speak their mind and respond – specifically speaking Anand Mahindra, Vir Sanghvi, Shreya Ghosal, and Abhishek Bachchan.
