The Fearless Blogger

Rainn Wilson didn’t ask much.  To the contrary, his request was quite simple in nature.  And yet thousands* of people joined together on Twitter today to blatantly deny his request.

Adding insult to injury: the topic trended.

Trending Topics

Trending Topics
For those not familiar with Twitter’s “trending topics“, it’s a list of  keywords that “happen to be popping up in a whole bunch of tweets” measured by Twitter and “adjusted in real-time throughout the day” (source: Twitter Blog)

Before they were moved to the front page, trending topics were a great way to find out about events ranging from as significant as a plane landing in the Hudson River and the Mumbai attacks, to celebrity gossip, sporting events, politics and the occassional car chase in LA.  Lately they’ve become a bit less – um- relevant, as bored tweeters band together to include key words in their tweets for the unsurpassable thrill (that was sarcasm, by the way) of seeing it listed among Twitter’s trends.  And then there’s the spammers – trying to get attention by stuffing their unrelated tweets with key words from the current trends.

Defying Rainn
Amid today’s tweets about Comic-Con and Johnny Depp’s role in Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”, was another flavor of twitter trend – in the support of labeling things, let’s call it the “Celebrity Retweet”. (Incidentally, I think today may have been the first day this month that Michael Jackson was not in the trending topics.)

At some point today the deliciously ironic, “DO NOT RETWEET THIS” was among the trending topics.  The origin?  Actor/writer Rainn Wilson, probably best know as Dwight on NBC’s “The Office” and for his unforgettable role as mother-f**ker Arthur Martin on “Six Feet Under”.

(For those who haven’t been following along: If “DO NOT RETWEET THIS” was a trending topic, it means that people – *gasp*- shamelessly and copiously retweeted it.)

My Big Fat Disobedience

Cynics may contend that this was Rainn’s failed attempt to leverage his online popularity (he has 1,104,757 people “following” him on Twitter) to assert his influence and shamelessly manipulate the masses.  I personally would never imply anything so callous. (Rainn – on the off-chance you read this and I’m wrong, please feel free to set me straight!)  To the contrary, Rainn’s a fun person to follow – his tweets are entertaining, engaging and often retweet and/or response-inspiring (some examples at the end of the post).

Anyway
Today’s online uprising is a good example of how quickly and easily information can spread when shared by people with a responsive audience.  Entertaining? Yes.  Even better – many celebrities endorse one or more charities and often use Twitter to promote their pet causes.  (Rainn has recently backed Planting Peace and the Mona Foundation.)

Also of interest to me is whose tweets get shared. If any publicity is good publicity, surely making the list of trending topics is a favorable indicator of one’s online influence – even if it is a direct result of people defying your request.  Free KFC aside, I’ve yet to see a tweet from Oprah hit trending topics (that I can remember).  Nor other heavily followed, high visibility accounts such as Britney Spears or Barack Obama (never thought I’d mention those two in the same sentence!).

Please Dish
Which celebrities do you especially enjoy following and why?  Any noteworthy tweets in particular you remember?  Share them in the comments!

@RainnWilson

A Sampling
Some of my favorite @RainnWilson tweets:

• I wonder what Matt Damon is effortlessly and charmingly and self-deprecatingly doing right now…
  (which was followed by . . .)
  
  • He’s probably rescuing baby seals from an oil spill in his tux and cleaning them off with his tongue in the lobby of his AIDS clinic…
  • Giving counsel to a meth-head runaway teenager in his Prius. #whatsmattdamondoing
• Now matter how you pronounce it, the planet “Uranus” is a sucky-ass name. I would go with “Hawkwind”. #renameuranus
• So many happy-go-lucky Europeans in NYC these days it’s like a giant Mentos commercial.
• Grey’s Anatomy. I play the conflicted doctor. RT You’re on a tv show?!?! (via @tarabrooks)
• I don’t get it. Glenda the good witch HAS to know that the ‘wizard’ of Oz is a total crock, right? So why does she send them there
• Did some self-hypnosis today-had myself walk like a orangutan and programmed myself to weep like a baby whenever I hear the word ‘lightbulb’

Build a Little Pancake in Your Soul

Speaking of Rainn Wilson  . . . it would be lame to write about him without mentioning and encouraging you to check out the website he co-founded: SoulPancake.com, created to to engage the user to “Chew on Life’s Big Questions” and remind us that

Life is a rich, weird, difficult experience.

If you followed @RainnWilson, you’d know about cool videos like this one

*OK, maybe not thousands.  Thousands is an exaggeration.  But hundreds sounded kind of lame.  Perhaps I could have used oodles, although I suppose that is lacking panache as well.

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

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