With the advent of social media, everything is public: your vacation, your trip to the bar, and any and every accomplishment in your life.
You can share all the good things you’re up to in social media, but the freedom also means that you can share the bad; there’s an epidemic of public Twitter feuds, especially among celebrities.
Twitter fights are stupid. I’ll just get that out of the way. They’re inherently passive aggressive and immature. Celebrities could short-circuit these feuds by responding privately or not responding at all, but that would be just too sensible. Twitter is a stupid platform for fights, just because it limits what you can say so you have to have terrible grammar just to get your words across – unless you’re a smart lady like Madeleine Albright, who responded to Conan O’Brien saying he was going as “slutty Madeleine Albright” for Halloween by replying “I’m considering going as hunky Conan O’Brien - but that might be too far fetched.”
Unfortunately, the majority of public figures are not as smart as Madeleine Albright. Recently, we’ve got a feud between current One Direction member Louis Tomlinson and former One Direction member Zayn Malik and his friend, Naughty Boy. Naughty Boy posted a picture of him and Malik in a passive aggressive reference to Malik’s recent departure from the band. Tomlinson made fun of the filter used, Naughty Boy said Tomlinson couldn’t sing, and then Tomlinson tweeted “Forgot you were such an in demand producer ... How does it feel to be riding on the back of someone else’s career?” and Naughty Boy replied, “Remember when you had a life and stopped making bitchy comments about mine?” Riveting stuff, and a really mature take for men in their 20s.
An example of losing a Twitter fight gracefully is Bette Midler. She made comments in an interview disparaging Ariana Grande using her sexuality in her music and videos. Grande responded by posting a picture of a younger, scantily clad Midler. Midler acknowledged that she was hypocritical and then complimented Grande’s voice. It would have been better for Midler to just keep her thoughts to herself, but at least she kept the feud off social media (except for her apology tweet) and admitted when she was wrong.
Twitter fights don’t make anyone look good. Take Chris Brown, who probably could never improve his image anyway, but still-- he got mad at two TV hosts (Adrienne Bailon and Tamar Braxton) for mocking his relationship with his girlfriend. He proceeded to call Bailon “ole trout mouth” and Braxton “Muppet Face.” At this point, I’m pretty sure Chris Brown does not care one iota about improving his public image. As well, after Angela Bassett told interviewers she didn’t consider Bobbi Kristina Brown for the part of Whitney Houston in a biopic because she wasn’t an actress, Brown sent out several near-incoherent tweets about Bassett being trans (which she is not).
Sometimes celebrities even use a special program to make tweets longer or will tweet screenshots of blog posts in order to get out more words on Twitter, which totally defeats the purpose and just makes you look like you have no idea what the point of Twitter is.
And in some cases, social media actions even create feuds where there were none before. In researching this column, I came across a feud between two Duggar sisters, Jessa and Jill. What was the “feud” about, you may ask? Jill unfollowed Jessa on Twitter. As far as I know, this has never been explained, but it doesn’t really mean anything. I unfollowed what seems like at least a quarter of my Facebook friends. It’s not because I don’t like them. It’s because they either post too much, or they post stupid things that aren’t worth keeping in my newsfeed so I can complain about them. Maybe Jessa is just really bad at tweeting.
So, do you like looking mature and reasonable? Do you hate when people think you’re childish and dumb? Then don’t get in a public fight with someone over Twitter.
