By SHARMILA NAIR
alltherage@thestar.com.my

WE CAN all agree that Twitter is an excellent place for everyone to communicate with their idols. It is the best and easiest way for anyone to find out just what their favourite celebrities are up to, and then well … erm, gossip about it.

The best part is, not only can we get the celeb news straight from the horse’s mouth, we can also communicate with our idols through the social networking site.

All we have to do is @mention a celebrity (provided that it’s their verified Twitter account and it is public) and we can believe that we are talking directly to our idols and that they listen to us.

Whether they actually read all their messages is, however, a different matter altogether. And when they actually reply to our Tweets, it totally makes our day, week and maybe even year!

Unfortunately, Twitter is not always good to its celebrity users. Sometimes, it is the very place where they get into trouble and even receive unnecessary negativity from other Twitterers. There are many instances when a celebrity’s long list of followers turn into their worst haters and there’s usually nothing these celebrities could do about it.

Friends turned foes

Ashton Kutcher was one one of the first few celebrities who understood the impact Twitter could make on people’s lives. He tweeted about everything and anything (he had even posted pictures of Demi Moore’s derriere, covered of course, online) and got many of his celebrity friends onboard the Twitter train.
He also competed with former talk-show host Larry King to see which one of them who could reach one million followers on Twitter – and he won.

Of course, now it is the eccentric singer Lady Gaga who reigns on the Twitterverse with over 16 million followers. Ashton has only about half of that number.

Ashton Kutcher

Anyway, Ashton who had always been vocal and active on Twitter made a surprising announcement recently, saying that he won’t be tweeting from his account anymore. He’s handing over the account to a management team and had made that decision right after one of his tweets caused a major firestorm last week.

“How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.” was all he had asked his followers, not knowing that Jo Pa (Joe Paterno, a former college football coach) was involved in a child abuse scandal.

After realising his mistake, Ashton deleted his Tweet and wrote this on his blog:
“I walked by the television and simply saw a headline that Joe Paterno had been fired. Having no more information than that, I assumed that he had been fired due to poor performance as an aging coach.

“As a football fan and someone who had watched Joe’s career move from that of legend/innovator to a head coach that fulfilled his duty in the booth, I assumed that the university had let him go due to football related issues.

“With that assumption (how dare I assume) I posted a tweet defending his career. I then wetn about my evening, had some dinner, did a little work, and about an hour later turned on ESPN where I got the full story.

“I quickly went back on my twitter account and found a hailstorm of responses calling me an ‘idiot’ and several other expletives that I’ve become accustom to hearing for almost anything I post. I quickly retracted and deleted my previous post; however, that didn’t seem enough to satisfy people’s outrage at my misinformed post. I am truly sorry.”

But the apology wasn’t good enough for his followers who kept insulting him for what they thought was a tweet supporting situations that allow child molestation.

Guess Ashton had had enough with all the negativity, and therefore decided to hand over his Twitter account to a third party. He also said:

“While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk, I’m going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content.”

Fighting back

Well, there’s one celebrity who wants to prove that she won’t allow herself to be bullied on Twitter (again) and that’s none other than Miley Cyrus.

Miley first quit Twitter last year when she couldn’t handle the amount of bullying from haters online. Then she had a change of heart and reactivated her Twitter account, vowing she won’t let the negativity bring her down again. She wanted to tweet for her real fans.

Last week however, Miley’s determination was tested when she received a tweet from a follower who taunted the singer for putting on weight.

Miley Cyrus

Not one to be pushed around, Miley fought back with this tweet: “By calling girls like me fat this is what you’re doing to other people. i love MYSELF & if you could say the same.” and posted a photo of an anorexic woman.

She then also posted a photo of full-figured Marilyn Monroe, which prompted this reply from fellow Disney starlet Demi Lovato: “@MileyCyrus AMEN!!!! god I love you. SO DO YOU!!! And whoever called you that has it coming. Miss you more than ever. ps SO proud of you for posting that! #curvesareBEAUTIFUL.”

Miley then replied to her best friend with this: “@ddlovato AMEN! I will destroy any one that ever calls you the F word. You have the SEXIIIESTTTT curvyyyy body! I LOVE IT! #werkthosecurves.”

Sharm says: The one famous person I tweet is the @dalailama and he never replies me. *sob*