Twitter & the transmundane
Since the Olympics ended former Tonight Show host Conan O Brien officially became an unemployment statistic. He's taken it hard too. Last week he launched his verified Twitter account. At least he wasn't celebrating his new fragrance in Shaumberg Illinois! Kirstie Alley has kind of give Twitter a bad rep for celebrities who now have nothing else to do. Her jokes about eating dogs and children, plus her numerous fantasy relationships probably haven't helped the Twitter image. Oh yeah and Conan has also grown a beard. What next: depression & weight gain?
Celebrities are evil
Conan has decided to do one other thing. He has decided to make some random person famous by following them on Twitter. In this case the person is Sarah Killen, and Conan Tweets, "I've decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change." Such cruel words. We have seen what can happen when a normal person's life changes permanently through a brush with fame. Jon Gosselin is never gonna live those penis pix down!
Did the devil make him do it?
The $64 000 dollar question is "What would possess O Brien to do this?" He seemed like a nice enough person. He has first hand knowledge of how unwanted attention can screw up your life. He revealed in one interview that he was a happy popular teen ager until the first Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan The Barbarian movie came out. After that he had no peace on the schoolyard, due to his name. Kids would follow him home in packs and challenge him to fight. Life was never to be the same again. it was either become a comedy writer or a serial murderer. When a high road isn't available then choose the lesser of two evils.
good sense is making promises you don't mean; spite is giving dubious gifts
Now Conan is passing on this dubious gift of random fame. He's even promising the girl that her life is gonna change. Now change is a popular idea. Barack Obama won a winning presidential campaign on a platform of change. At least in the President's case people knew that when he said "change" he was sensible enough to mean "business as usual as soon as things get back to normal". Since Sarah seems pretty normal, right down to the peanut butter and gummi bears, what could've gotten into O Brien?
Relieved of command - but has Conan still got it?
Maybe Conan wants to feel that he still has some power and importance left. He may not be the host of the Tonight Show, but if he can reach out and bestow second hand fame on his new random BFF, then that's gotta count for something. Maybe this is some subtle kind of revenge on the entertainment industry. By showing that anyone can become famous, he cheapens the accomplishments of those who are already famous. That compensates for his own lose.
Is he passing the torch or throwing the hand grenade?
What if Conan himself just got turned off with fame. When you thing back to where this started then you can't help thinking that he didn't choose fame as much as fame chose some anonymous Boston kid who liked hockey and Mars bars. Though he couldn't have been more mundane his life would never be the same. So maybe Conan is trying to cure himself of the fame disease by passing it on the same way he himself got it - 'random selection'. I like to think that Conan has started looking for a high road, rather than that he has stopped looking for the lesser evils in life. Call me a naive optimist, but I like to keep some faith in human nature.
PS I'm sure that Conan already feels horrible about pointing the hi-intensity laser spotlight of fame onto an unsuspecting young woman. Not that she holds it against him. Since being tagged and made it by COB she has been rear ended while driving so the Conan Effect could be already kicking in. Yet Sarah seems free of any hard feelings. She describes Conan as her 'hero for changing everything without effort'. Then again she also has tweeted that she's out in the back yard interviewing a squirrel. So maybe she's already developing Brien's sardonic humor.
Still when a young woman describes herself on her Twitter profile as "I love to smile and have fun in life. I think that anyone and anything can be forgiven and we should all just love and be" chances are good that she'll take it well (or that she's just killed her boyfriend). Besides, if things really go off the rails then she probably has good grounds for some kind of civil law suit against O Brien. That'll make him think twice before pulling this kind of stunt again!
