Why Twitchange depresses me

Look, I don’t want to be the curmudgeon here, but I think I need to say what’s on my mind. I should first state that I agree with the general purpose of TwitChange. Raising money for a good cause? Great! Using Twitter for something other than inane bullshit? What a nice change of pace.

But come on, let’s face it: the general premise behind TwitChange is utterly depressing. Here’s the premise: you, a random Twitter user, place a bid on an eBay auction for a celebrity. If you win, you get all sorts of amazing things, like the celebrity “follow[ing] you on Twitter for a minimum of 90 days, will retweet one of your tweets and will send out a tweet including your @twitterhandle.” Whoa, man!! A celebrity will follow me for 90 days and echo my username out once!? For upwards of $500!? How is this not a bad deal for anyone involved?!?!!

I guess it just makes me sad that people feel the need to be validated by paying a bunch of cash to have a pseudo Twitter relationship with a celebrity. I love Nathan Fillion and Joel McHale and Felicia Day just as much as the next person, but I don’t go around with a handful of money asking them to be forced to interact with me. It’s a clever idea and a great way to generate money for a charity, but it’s predicated on exploiting people’s trite and awkward desires to be close to celebrities. And it’s totally artificial on top of it. Ryan Seacrest isn’t going to remember who you are the day after you win the bid.

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 11:16 pm - essays, technology

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