The Bloggess is the web persona of a Texas blogger named Jenny Lawson. Her posts run the gamut of oddball humor which her readers respond to in kind via comments. Everyone’s tongue planted firmly in cheek, The Bloggess is the kind of naughty, gross and irreverent humor we engage in as teens and young adults and sometimes, it’s fun to lose the adult outer layer and revel in that again.
Jenny has parlayed her Bloggessing into a popular Twitter feed, a gig as an advice columnist and various other kinds of web fame. Good for her. She doesn’t take herself too seriously – also good for her – but others do. Others who don’t seem to get the joke, or maybe they don’t appreciate being the joke.
Recently Willam Shatner found his Twitter feed was the repeated tagline on a Bloggess stream of consciousness ramble for which she is well-known. The Shat, who has a gazillion followers* – though not as many as Ashton Kutcher – did not appreciate the attention. Maybe it was the hookers? Regardless, he blocked The Bloggess. Which only gave her more material because the best way to cut a comic off is not handing them more ways to goon you.
The followers of The Bloggess, which number thousands more than mine but still less than Ashton Kutcher’s, being game and having too much time on their hands took to the hashtags and what was just a little joke at Mr. Shatner’s expense exploded on the twitsphere into an “on-going incident”.
Social media is interesting. Right now, Americans are in real danger of having Obama’s health care “reforms’ neutered into being a moot point and what inspires people to arms on the Internet is a “feud” between an Internet humorist and an aging celebrity.
Wow. Life in the lower 48 must be worse than the news up here makes it look, and they make it look bad.
*Unsurprisingly Shatner is on Twitter simply to self-promote because he follows only 9 people and one of those 9 is himself.
anniegirl1138 
It’s not the people who are the problem in the lower 48 – it’s the right-wing media who spout venom, then get a reaction to their lies, and then report that as news. The public health option in healthcare reform is not dead. What’s the line? The guy shows up at the door and says, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Same here. There are many powerful forces who have a stake in keeping the insurance companies in the driver’s seat, and it’s always a battle to change the status quo. I have called both of my senators to register my support for the public health option because they are both keeping track of calls.
Which is why, I think, more calm and measured voices are needed and why when wrong information is out there, people need to object as loudly as the right promotes half-truths.
The perception of the U.S. population outside the country wouldn’t necessarily shock Americans but they could learn from it.
Awww. I’m a little disappointed, cause the thing I’ve always liked about William Shatner is his ability to laugh at himself.
Amen. There has to be a little silliness in life in order to gird your loins to pick up the fight for the more serious stuff.
Did I just say “gird your loins”? Ew. I blame William Shatner for that.
Thing is, Jen, I don’t think people gird their loins for serious stuff at all. They prefer the silly stuff and put more effort into it comparatively than things that are much more important. We have to have lighter moments to be sure, but I marvel at the power of social media and how it stubbornly insists on being a mass mobilization of nothing.
People need distractions. If it was all-healthcare, all the time, we’d lose our minds. I tend to allow for the frivolous.
Well, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about healthcare much longer now that Obama is dropping the public option there will be no noticeable reform. Misinformation and sprinkles wins again.
My question is, does William Shatner do anything anymore that isn’t self-promotion?
No, he doesn’t. His blocking of the The Bloggess is actually a shrewd move. He is getting a lot of Twitter exposure from it and you know what they saw about publicity.