Twitter: Disintermediation of gossip mags Perez Hilton Ashton Kutcher

ByLaurel Papworth

 Online Communities rock for voyeurs and snoops. Here’s a scrap currently ongoing between @PerezHilton (of the infamous Perez Hilton blog) and @aplusk otherwise known as Ashton Kutcher, Punk’d host, blogger and Mr Demi Moore (she’s @mrskutcher) : Ashton Kutcher : He doesn’t like me cause the truth threatens his relevance. RT mrsscrapper Perez is so…

 pluskOnline Communities rock for voyeurs and snoops. Here’s a scrap currently ongoing between @PerezHilton (of the infamous Perez Hilton blog) and @aplusk otherwise known as Ashton Kutcher, Punk’d host, blogger and Mr Demi Moore (she’s @mrskutcher) :

  • Ashton Kutcher : He doesn’t like me cause the truth threatens his relevance. RT mrsscrapper Perez is so not supportive of you (RT means retweet, so it would read (tweet from @mrsscrapper) “Perez is SO not supportive of you”) (link) 
  • Ashton KutcherPerez Hilton: The “truth” is subjective. You think really highly of yourself if you know the “truth”! (link) 
  • Ashton Kutcher:  your truth is indeed subjective, I understand how you could see it that way. (link) 
  • Perez Hilton: Not everything is black or white. And my God is not any better or worse than yours. (link)
  • Ashton Kutcher: I wasn’t commenting on your God I was commenting on your Ego. (link)
  • Perez Hilton: My Ego is quite healthy. It is destroyed hourly by the masses and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t take myself 2 seriously. (link)

Perez Hilton Twitter page. 

This fight is coming up for a few reasons. One, Ashton Kutcher is about to go on Oprah to show her Twitter (just joined, @Oprah, no tweets yet and 28k followers) and chat about his fundraising on that social network. So Perez Hilton tweeted a few tweets later: Find out many ways U can give back http://perezhilton.com/cate…

Perez Hilton is a troll – in social networking terms. He creates dissent to pull attention to himself. No shocks there. The next few missives are to @britneyspears, statements about preferring to follow Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and so on. About on the same par as publicly stating an “unfollow” or other schoolyard tantrums. 

The key is that first line from Ashton Kutcher about Perez Hilton:

He doesn’t like me cause the truth threatens his relevance. 

What does Ashton Kutcher mean? I think it’s that anyone – young kid working in a hair salon, mother at home with 3 kids under the age of 5, student on a bus to college – can get their dose of daily gossip direct from the source. Why do we need New Idea or Who Weekly  if we can read blogs and Facebook and Twitter for the ‘real’ story? What Ashton calls the ‘truth’? Why not just go read Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore, whoever, directly – on their blog, their twitter, their facebook page? 

Of course, it’s not just the content – original source – it’s also the reportage. Journalists don’t make the news, they report it. Bloggers often do both. Reporting requires value-add, as long as it’s not cutting and pasting press releases.F Finding, Filtering, Finessing, Forwarding. Would you have known about this fight if I hadn’t blogged it? Does Perez Hilton snarky comments add fun, humour, or even education? Perez will remain relevant as long as he continues to value add. The fact that he picks fights to insert himself into conversations is telling – he’ll hang onto his “social connections” with the Rich and Famous for dear life. But so will we. Every single one of Ashton Kutchers 900,000 followers will be watching and reading and commenting. Perez just has to make sure his voice continues to be heard above everyone elses. 

See? Even bloggers may become disenfranchised, disintermediated… You can follow what Twitterers have to say, and their need to take sides (swarm into tribes) @plusk vs @perezhilton here on search.

22 Comments

  4. I can’t believe I’m biting…

    “Journalists don’t make the news, they report it. Bloggers often do both.”

    I know you love the magic of the shiny interweb, as we all do, but if you think about that statement, you don’t really believe it do you?

    For every Guido Fawkes – http://janemerrick.independentminds.livejournal.com/7629.html – there’s an Anna Politkovskaya – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya .

    And then some.

    Tim Burrowes – Mumbrella’s last blog post..Man gets on a bus

    1. … I’ll reconsider that stance the day I see YOU, dear Mumbles, create news not report it.

      And you can’t have it both ways. Either journalists are ‘impartial’ reporters of other people’s news. OR they are passionate advocates and activists who use their journalism – and later, blogging – as a way of getting their OWN stories out.

      For every Four Corners/Pulitzer Prize journalist with in depth story, there’s 10,000 reporters with press releases adding a snarky spin. Sound familiar? 😛

      You always take this stance Tim – “Mumbai bombings were reported by press first, and then filtered through Twitter” and completely ignore that reporters were on Twitter asking around for contacts so they could contact those who were tweeting their experiences directly to us. In the chicken-or-the-egg stakes, we the public precede we the media.

      I could be mean and call you the PerezHilton of Australian Marketing/Media, but you aren’t that obnoxious. Yet. hahaha. 😛

  5. I think people follow Perez Hilton and Ashton Kutcher for very different reasons the would follow someone like you for example (ie, entertainment vs information).

    However, I would object to the ‘voyeurs and snoops’ angle of your 1st paragraph – it implies that we’re somehow abusing someone’s privacy when reading their tweets.

    Wheras celeb’s used to complain about gossip mags and paparazzi intrusion into their lives, they now share every moment of their life on twitter openly and consciously – they want us to know everything about them – in fact the more the general public knows about them, the more celebrity points they win!

    As an aside, have you read Blind Truth by Ben Elton? Talks about a future world where every second of your life is streamed live to the web – people post video’s of themselves giving birth in the hope that someone, somewhere will watch it. It moves me to question one aspect of social media – if everyone is becoming the creator of content, who is going to be left to consume it?

    I see twitterers who follow tens of thousands of people – why? They certainly cant be reading them all (or any at all) – i have trouble keeping up with a 100 or so.

    – Gurmesh

    1. “voyeurs and snoops” -> feeling like you are listening in on a private conversation. The Invisible Audience. It may not actually be private, but heck, a few years ago, there is no way I could’ve listened to demi moore and ashton kutcher chatting in their own time.

      Twitter is a stream, don’t try to control it. Imagine being at a pub with thousands of people. You can either sit in the corner with the same 50 or 100, or you can walk around, listen in, chat for a while then move to another group. Up to you. 🙂

  7. One (of several) wrong assumptions you make there is that there’s a single mass of journalists with one ethos, way of behaving or agreed code of conduct.

    Now based on the example you use above of Perez Hilton getting into a spat, I think when you say “make the news”, you mean get themselves talked about.

    That’s what tabloid newspapers do all the time. When the Sunday Telegraph runs nude pictures of fake Pauline Hanson, is it making the news or reporting it?

    I’m not entirely sure what the relevance of the Mumbai case is to that debate, unless you’re looking to turn this into a bloggers vs journalists debate. In which case you might as well have an apples versus aardvarks debate.

    But there is one difference between the pres and bloggers. The comment about Mumbai you attribute to me, wasn’t from me and doesn’t reflect my views. At least if it was a journalist who’d written it. I could complain to the Australian Press Council and seek a correction.

    Cheers,

    Tim – Mumbrella

    Tim Burrowes – Mumbrella’s last blog post..Tweet beach meet kicks off Sydney’s seven days of social media

  8. Yeah I agree, it’s impossible to get some journalists to correct and apologise. You guys need a organisation to force that. Not necessary with social media – we print our own refutation, with proof and build an audience to back our view.

    And, are you saying your comments on here are not YOU ??? o.O

    Go away Tim, you’ve got some important tip from Twitter to create ‘News’ from. For instance I just hit 5000 followers! yay! I wouldn’t want to hold you up.

  9. No, I’m saying that you’ve inaccurately reported those comments.

    M<y comment in that case (on the Denver plane crash, not the Mumbai bombing), was that the journalist versus tweeting eye witness argument just isn’t a valid debate as the two are doing different things.

    Via the silkcharm grinder that’s done a 180 degree turn and become press versus Twitter. It’s not a valid question, so why would I want to take sides on it?

    By the way, you didn’t answer my main point…

    Cheers,

    Tim – Mumbrella

    Tim Burrowes – Mumbrella’s last blog post..Tweet beach meet kicks off Sydney’s seven days of social media

    1. I’m not sure what you main point is… if it has to do with ethics, well, isn’t there an ethics course as part of journalism degrees these days? But I think you have missed my point, which wasn’t a main one, but an observation.

      “Journalists don’t make the news, they report it. Bloggers often do both.”

      .. and that is, I thought journalists were mainly Independent witnesses? So when someone is making news – being shot – a journo reports it? Rarely is it the journo that is being shot? And if a blogger gets shot, they both make the news – are the subject – and also report it. Maybe I should call it “making primary content” or ‘creating situations for reporting’. A twitterer in a plane crash is both making headlines and reporting it.

      In some places “he made the Evening news!” implies he was the subject of the news, not the reporter of it. Have i got it wrong?

      There is a role for independent observers, it’s not a dig at journos vs twitterers/bloggers. I do think that the majority of reporters are spend most of their time collating quotes and shaping it into something that looks like original content but is actually secondary content – other peoples quotes with spin thrown in. A bit like what some bloggers do 😛

      Always so defensive Timbo.

  10. Laurel what’s your motivation to dedicating so much time to an us versus them debate around the merits of social media versus ‘heritage media’. You’re not an ex print media person with a bone to pick surely?

    “You guys need a organisation to force that. Not necessary with social media – we print our own refutation, with proof and build an audience to back our view.”

    “you guys”, “we” … c’mon … and how true is the above anyway.

    Ben’s last blog post..TV to web

    1. Hi Ben, my comment “You guys need a organisation to force that. Not necessary with social media – we print our own refutation, with proof and build an audience to back our view. was in reference to Tim’s comment But there is one difference between the pres and bloggers. The comment about Mumbai you attribute to me, wasn’t from me and doesn’t reflect my views. At least if it was a journalist who’d written it. I could complain to the Australian Press Council and seek a correction.

      I didn’t want to let it stand that journalists have a higher ethics authority to answer to, and bloggers don’t. Ultimately bloggers answer to the world – we are very quick to point out inaccuracies in each others content – as you and Mumbles so ably demonstrated.

      If I was really going to be snarky to Tim, I would ask something about perhaps an organisation that investigates journo/bloggers who incite hatred against another blogger but that would be completely off topic.

      And to clarify, Heritage Media is not Mainstream Media. It’s using old methods of providing news, rather than new ones or a mashup of old and new. e.g. newspapers that are only print, or simply post up online with no attempt to integrate interactivity and engagement. The Guardian is not Heritage for example.

    1. Nah all you have to know is *points at Mumbles* HE STARTED IT! and that some of my best friends are journalists 🙂

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