R6- Twitter Users

Jordan Radway
4/25/17
MCS 355

Reflection #6

"Although famous people represent an increasingly significant part of mass media, for many academics, they personify the trivial, dangerous decadence of American culture (Ewen, 1989; Lowenthal, 1961). In keeping with this viewpoint, people who enjoy consuming celebrity culture have been pathologized, portrayed as miserable or lonely, or seen as cultural dupes (Feasey, 2008; Jensen, 1992). However, celebrity images are culturally pervasive; they have become part of our day-to-day lives (Turner, 2004: 17) and part of the raw material through which we construct identities and engage in public discourse (Feasey, 2008; Gamson, 1994)".

      The last sentence of this quote caught my eye when it stated, "celebrity images are culturally pervasive; they have become part of our day-to-day lives and part of raw material through which we construct identities and engage in public discourse". Then they went on to say that "We conceptualize celebrity as an organic and ever-changing performative practice rather than a set of intrinsic personal characteristics or external labels. This practice involves ongoing maintenance of a fan base, performed intimacy, authenticity and access, and construction of a consumable persona. Increased access to technologies of content creation and distribution has popularized techniques of ‘micro-celebrity’, using social media to develop and maintain an audience (Senft, 2008)". Social media is a platform where celebrities are really seen as what they described as "Micro-celebrities", "Micro-celebrity can be understood as a mindset and set of practices in which audience is viewed as a fan base; popularity is maintained through ongoing fan management; and self-presentation is carefully constructed to be consumed by others". Basically these micro-celebrities are seen as superstars in the social media world and its like their every move or action is watched and documented by their fans. Its more like they have to try and sensor what they let the media see because as soon as they get a hold of something they take it and run with it. These micro-celebrities are always in the spotlight whether they like it or not. Micro-celebrities can do many things, they can motivational speakers or they can be the funny tweeters or they can even be that one celebrity that no one really likes and are constantly in arguments with their fans or followers, etc. There are man form of micro-celebrities and they all can be looked at constantly for a variation of different things. 

One micro-celebrity that I enjoy would be Skip Bayless and he is sport analysis that not to many people get along with. On twitter he makes comments about various sports that sometimes people agree with and most of the times they don't and it starts heated arguments. He is famous for this as he was making his living on the ESPN show called "FIRST TAKE" where basically their would be topics in sports and it would be a huge back and forth debate between Skip Bayless and Steven A Smith. This is of course one of my favorite shows because I am a huge sports fan but I chose Skip because I am not too fond of him myself and I believe he knows a lot of people do not like him as well but he continues to say and do the things he does because he knows he has that fan base that will entertain what he is saying and stir up various arguments. He has reached that level of Micro-celebrity where all of your actions are being watched and responded too on social media. 

There has been a very heated argument over who should be the MVP or most valuable player in the NBA this year. In this argument I actually agreed with Skip because for once I think he was right. Of course their were a few fans and responders to his tweet which may have thought otherwise but this was actually one of the very few tweets and videos posted by Skip that not have received a lot of negative feed back. 

Now this is a tweet where people as well as me did not agree with what Skip Bayless was saying. Firs of all he is talking about one of the best players in the NBA that is just returning from a severely broken leg and still had one of the best seasons of his life. If you look a little closer you can see a response to Skip's tweet by a fan accusing Skip of stating an invalid point. As I said before people are not to fond os Skip and I think he knows it but he uses social media and TV to entertain people and sometimes get under people skin, but in reality he thinks that he is always right. But most of the things he says is outlandish. 

Works Cited 

Marwick, A., & Boyd, D. (n.d.). To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter. Retrieved April 20, 2017