You’ll forgive me for sneaking in some pop culture in the mix because it’s Saturday and all, right? Rapper Kanye West is having a bit of a moment on Twitter the past few hours, apologizing for the Taylor Swift incident from last year when he stormed the stage during the artist’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to complain that Beyonce should have won the Best Female Video award instead.
But not just that. He’s also making it crystal clear, as others have before him admittedly, that Twitter has changed the way celebrities interact with their fans and anyone who’s interested in what they have to say really. And slamming mainstream media in the process.
So reading about four pages of tweets by West, there are some interesting gems to be found in there besides his apologies to Swift and his complaints about the massive backlash he’s received since then, receiving death threats and getting booed off stage and so on.
This blog reposted the long rant (easier to read).
Here’s part of his rant against mainstream media, and his love for Twitter:
Man I love Twitter… I’ve always been at the mercy of the press but no more… The media tried to demonize me
She deserves the apology more than anyone. Thank you Biz Stone and Evan Williams for creating a platform where we can communicate directly
and
These aren’t regular tweets… this is stream of consciousness … I want you guys to know and feel where my head is at…
These tweets have no manager, no publicist , no grammar checking… this is raw
True enough, the rapper could have written a thoughtful blog post (or a letter) on the matter and it would have been picked up by followers and celeb watchers just the same, but the beauty of Twitter is that it enables, encourages even, people to be more concise and direct.
You can consider his tweets insane rambling by a celebrity who is up late and possibly drunk, or as some lame way of getting attention (if it is, I’ll take this over most publicity stunts I’ve seen over the past three decades).
Or you can look at it this way: 5 years ago, how were fans able to get this much insight into their idols’ thoughts and feelings? Answer is they didn’t.