Celebritwits I would follow anywhere

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Added: Fri. Jul 31, 2009 10:52am
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The hoopla over Oprah's debut on Twitter was ridiculous, but surprisingly divided. Celebrity tweets often feel more like personal ads, mini commercials (don't forget to catch my show on ---!) or little snippets of information carefully orchestrated to build admirers. Twitter is a community and expects interaction. Celebrities often act like they are above it, engaging only with other celebs. But a few are full participants and show us freeform personality by tweeting what they really think and feel. Some have surprised me with their wit and intelligence, some have impressed me with their commitment to inspire, and some have just entertained the hell out of me. Those are the celebs on my list.

At the top of my favorite celebritwit charts is @BrentSpiner. If you can't place the name, he was Commander Data on Start Trek: The Next Generation. That's why I followed him, but has nothing to do with why I continue to do so. He uses twitter as a stage to engage and entertain. His dry humor never fails to amuse me, and I check his bio page regularly to follow the one-man plays he puts on. When he's in the mood, he answers the inane questions people must endlessly tweet at him with affable sarcasm. I follow him because he's creative, funny, sarcastic and engaging. And I forgive him for never answering me. Even though I was among his first few hundred followers.

@MichaelIanBlack is one of the funniest twitterers on my list. Again, I found him early. He devised the most entertaining and quick ways to build a following I've ever seen. He declared war on @Levarburton, another Star Trek actor. He called it the LeWar on LeVar, and enlisted followers (the point was to beat LeVar's follower count). I enlisted on both sides. LeVar was taken aback at first, but wound up being an erstwhile participant...and winning. Of course, he did have a 20K head start. Michael Ian Black was - and is - engaging, responsive and funny, and his blog is one of my favorite reads. Levar burton is down to earth and sincere. Not an always-on comedian, but a really nice guy. 

Alyssa Milano - I love her. seriously. She's gorgeous and you can just feel the fun raditating from her. She responds to lots of people and confesses to being a tweetlover. She is so refreshingly...normal

@Aplusk well, Ashton started it all, didn't he? I follow him for similar reason that I follow Alyssa. He's so real. Very warm and engaging, although less likely to respond and often a one-way tweeter. 

Shaquille O'Neal is a great follow. I'm still a little pissed that he left the Orlando Magic for california - for reasons that made no sense to me (the extra money would have been eaten by the state income tax, not a valid excuse) so it felt personal. It's been a long time, but I still haven't forgiven him. He made basketball exciting, and we were excited to have him. But he's still a great tweet. On any given day, you can find things on his profile like "Dear david beckham, dnt make me tweet to 2 million people that yur scared of shaq, u betta respnd, if u scared get a dog" and a whole slew of "yo mama" comments. Gotta love it. A few days ago, he was trying to gain access to the white house wearing shorts. Guess he wanted to chat with Barack. He was pretty disappointed when they wouldn't let him in.

I've long been a fan of Kirstie Alley so I was happy to find her to be thoughtful, responsive and randomly silly. She's got well-formed opinions she's not afraid to voice, and a strong sense of civic responsibility. 

ok, I started following @mchammer because...well, who could resist. He built his reputation on the worst fashion statement in the history of the world and hasn't done anything noteworthy in years. So when he turned out to be interesting, I was pleasantly surprised. Besides, he thinks Glenn Beck is an idiot. I love that.

I recently started following @andydick and he's as funny and random as I expected. I love a comedian who follows through. Ditto @kevinnealon. I have very high hopes for Kevin.

This last one isn't a celebrity outside of twitter, but he has a huge following, probably because he was a featured member for a while on the "find people to follow" page, which is now choked with celebrities and impossible for a regular person to get a spot on. Golly, thanks twitter. very helpful. Let's ignore interesting people in order to suck up to celebs and make ourselves look more important by association. Anyway, back in the day when regular people could find themselves featured, I met @Agent_M and have been a fan ever since. He had about 20K followers then, and has 917,398 right this minute, so he qualifies as a twitter celebrity even if he isn't a real life celebrity. He's got a pretty cool job at Marvel Comics...but I follow him because he's one of the most consistently interesting people on twitter, because he's goofy as hell, because his blog is devoted to tacos and zombies, and because he still talks to me, even with all those followers in tow.

So those are my favorite celebs. Most of them are b-listers...but maybe that's why they happily engage nobodys like me. Maybe we are more valuable to actors who have fallen out of the spotlight than to those using twitter to feed their own egos. 

To verify whether you're following a real celebrity or someone faking it, go to http://truthtweet.com/. And if you're a celeb and you're not on my list, you don't engage, you pontificate. I don't need commercials for your latest book or upcoming show in my twitterstream. That's why it's a short list. Way too many celebs are just full of themselves.