It was a slow porn day for Nikki Benz.
For most of it, she was on her couch watching movies. That's what she twittered, anyway (@NikkiBenz). She is a porn star who grew up in Toronto and now lives in Los Angeles.
In the morning, she was eating banana nut Cheerios while watching The Craft, a supernatural teen horror flick from the nineties. Later, she was "on my couch," again, about to watch Role Models, a comedy starring Paul Rudd. Then she went for a pleasant drive in Beverly Hills, because it was a beautiful day. The next morning, she woke up - 3,257 followers, as of late yesterday, wanted to know.
For a day I was one of them. This Monday, I followed more than a dozen Twits - I mean, Twitterers: politicians, experts, actors, musicians, athletes (as sure as one can be about people's identities on the Internet). The world, clearly, is Twittering now, updating their willing followers on their thoughts, goings-on and hour-to-hour minutiae, 140 characters (or less) at a time.
But what is it exactly? A feed of inanity for the celebrity-addicted? A shameless self-promotion vehicle? An important information-gathering-and-disseminating device? A profound insight into the collective consciousness? A total waste of time?
Immersion in the Twitterverse was like dropping into a horror-mystery movie. All I could think of was that weird flick White Noisewith Michael Keaton. He played an architect who became obsessed with hearing dead people's voices through the white noise of radio and the static of television. It was good casting, because Mr. Keaton looked bug-eyed a lot of the time, pale and
unstable, always knocked back a bit by what he heard.
And for a day at least I had to listen to, or rather read, what was on the mind of people from beyond my life, forced to imagine their existence.
"I'm drunky on a Monday!" wrote Perez Hilton (@perezhilton), the Los Angeles-based celebrity gossip, to his 321,397 followers. "It's my birthday!!!! Still at dinner. Doing the tasting menu. Yum yum!"
Meanwhile, John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain), the failed Republican presidential candidate, was on his way back from Brussels, and Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) had fallen off his bike during the start of a race in Spain. In the afternoon, the seven-time-winner of the Tour de France, who is in his comeback year after retiring in 2005, sent a tweet reading: "I'm alive! Broken clavicle (right). Hurts like hell for now. Surgery in a couple of days. Thanks for all the well wishes." A while later, the 37-year-old posted a Twitpic of himself with a friend, drinking wine with his right arm in a sling.
He was eating crackers and cheese, he said, then going to bed.
Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and his wife, Demi Moore (@mrskutcher), were on their way back from the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean, where they had attended the wedding of Bruce Willis, Ms. Moore's ex-husband, to model Emma Hemming. They twittered about going through customs in Miami. (Yawn.) Saturday had been a much more interesting Twitter day, I discovered, after looking back in their updates. Mr. Kutcher posted a picture of his wife's butt, as she was leaning over in her white bikini to steam his suit. "Shhh don't tell wifey," his tweet read.
Sure, I thought: As if he hadn't approved it with her first. That's the thing: Most celebrities use Twitter as a way of augmenting their fame quotient. They are allowing themselves to be stalked, but they are controlling what their pursuers see. They are their own paparazzi.
They also understand that it's the ultimate Hollywood game, writ large - to the universe. Who is more popular? And they know that they need to be entertaining.
