Today Twitter Taught me that I am a Terrible Person

This evening, I had a completely random chance exchange on Twitter with a star of one of my favorite t.v. shows.  It was something I stumbled upon when checking Twitter really quick right as I was about to shut down my laptop before leaving work for the day.  And within minutes of the convo, I sorely regretted ever checking Twitter at all, let alone getting into this conversation.  I've had my Twitter account for a couple years now, and I follow exactly 70 twitter feeds.  They consist of the following:

• News sites and blogs like CNN, NPR, Gawker
• Entertainment/TV news sites like TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, and E! Online, along with some t.v. reviewers.
• A few cast and crew of t.v. shows that I like, like Chuck, Community, and Dexter.
• Comedians like Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin, Bill Maher, Howard Stern
• Some fangirl/fanboy sites for Chuck and the Hunger Games
• A few "real life" friends who actually have Twitter accounts (not many of my friends do).

So, here is what happened.  Community is one of my favorite t.v. shows.  There is a character on the show named Shirley, and the actress who plays her is Yvette Nicole Brown.

 
In the meantime, there’s a TV Guide contest thing going on right now, where fans have to vote for their favorite t.v. show to be on the cover of the magazine.  Several people in my twitter feed, including Yvette, have been tweeting about this, trying to drum up votes for whatever show they like best (or that they star in or produce).  When I did my quick check of Twitter before leaving work, one of the first tweets I saw was from Yvette, on this TV Guide subject.  Here is the exchange:

yvettenbrown yvette nicole brown
Chuck lovers, please remember our beloved #Chuck has been on the @TVGuide cover before. #Community has not. #justsayin ow.ly/7dFAv

maryploppins613 Rachael
#Chuck hasn't either has it? RT @yvettenbrown Chuck lovers, pls remember our beloved Chuck has been on @TVGuide cover b4. #Community has not

maryploppins613 Rachael
@yvettenbrown I love #Community too so I'm torn, but I don't think either of them (#Chuck, #Community) have ever gotten a cover ... ?

yvettenbrown yvette nicole brown
@maryploppins613 Chuck has. For Comic-con and maybe another time too. I think it was actually on the cover the week of Comic-con twice.

yvettenbrown yvette nicole brown
@maryploppins613 Like I said, Chuck HAS been on the cover.

maryploppins613 Rachael
@yvettenbrown Oh ok the Comic-con thing, well I guess I should say it hasn't gotten its OWN cover? ;-)

maryploppins613 Rachael
I think I slightly annoyed @yvettenbrown but that means she tweeted me, yay I'm so cool and famous now! ;-)

NOTE: What I meant by this tweet was, “I am happy that Yvette tweeted me because I am a fan, even though I think I kind of annoyed her in the process” (trying to be funny and self-deprecating, because I didn't mean to annoy her).  I meant NOTHING more than that, but I think she took it to mean, “I’m purposely harassing Yvette Nicole Brown on Twitter just so that she will respond to me and give me attention, because I am an attention-seeking famewhore.”  I guess I can see how she could interpret it this way if she was already put off by my earlier tweets.  In hindsight, I should have just said "I feel cool now" instead of "cool and famous," or else I could have just tweeted her back and said "thanks for tweeting me."  But I typed the thing without putting a ton of thought into it first; I was just excited that she was tweeting me at all.  Attention seeking or trolling was definitely not my intent.

yvettenbrown yvette nicole brown
@maryploppins613 It got it's OWN cover TWICE. But, I'm done discussing it. :) It's cool. Vote for chuck! ;)

maryploppins613 Rachael
@yvettenbrown What!!?? It did?? Wow last yr when Supernatural won, everyone said Chuck had never gotten a cover! Hmm wow.

maryploppins613 Rachael
@yvettenbrown I will give #Community some votes because you tweeted me and now I feel cool even if u want to Twitter-punch me. :)

What I didn’t realize while I was tweeting those last couple tweets is that she was busy blocking me.  Then she tweeted this, to her entire 72,000 Twitter followers:

yvettenbrown yvette nicole brown
Gotta remember not to engage those who tweet just for attention. Another foolish back and forth conversation. #NoOneIsThatDim

Well, apparently I am that dim, Yvette, because I thought we were just having a lovely conversation, hahaha.  I thought we were new besties, but in the meantime, I was being twitter-dumped.  Hahaha anyway then, to add more drama to the sitch, she then also engaged in conversations with OTHER people about what a horrible asshole I am:

yvettenbrown yvette nicole brown
@paulverhoeven Never you! Our tweet-and-hug-a-thons sustain me in hard times! :) *hug*

yvettenbrown yvette nicole brown
@amypaffrath Hey, sweetie! :) So annoying! I always realize it's an #attentiongrab 3 or 4 exchanges into the back & forth #andKICKmyself ;)

So there you go.  Shit just got REAL with this stupid TV Guide Cover contest.  I apparently pissed off Yvette Nicole Brown so bad that she had to be comforted by other people regarding the incident.  Hugs were exchanged.  I had NO idea when I surfed over to Twitter on my way out of the office today, just what kind of pile of steaming crap I was stepping into.  And the fact that she immediately blocked me meant that I didn't even have a chance to apologize or plead my case to try to dig myself out of the pile of shit.  I'm assuming that once you get blocked, that person will never see any of your tweets again.  So that's that.  I have learned the following lessons today:

1. Never tweet a celeb and just assume that you won't get a response, because apparently, they occasionally do respond.  And if by chance you DO get a response and it seems like they are agitated, just don't bother saying anything else, otherwise they might get even more pissed and block your ass.   Though I frankly wonder if the very first comment I made was enough to tempt her to block me, because I implied that I was voting for Chuck over Community (which, to be fair, could have easily meant that I was just trolling, for all she knew).
2. Being excited about a D-list celeb tweeting me evidently makes me a terrible person, and an attention-seeking famewhore.
3. The TV Guide Magazine cover is extremely important to Yvette Nicole Brown.  And I get that, I really really honestly do.  As a fangirl, I always worry when a TV Show I love is on the bubble, so I can't even imagine what I'd feel like if I was a member of the cast and crew of that show, and it was my job on the line.  I'm not entirely sure how healthy it is for her to be bitching out and blocking fans of her show on Twitter for voting for the wrong TV Guide cover, but who am I to say ... especially when I was also checking Twitter and engaging w/her on Twitter myself.  People in glass houses, that type of thing.  But if my job involved having fans on Twitter, I think I'd have to avoid reading many of their tweets, otherwise I personally would go insane.
4. Never assume that any message can be properly conveyed in 140 characters.  My point with the tweets was to say that BOTH Chuck and Community have had a extremely uphill battle with ratings and renewals ever since they started airing, and that I thought both of them were on a level playing field with that TV Guide cover exposure, which made it really hard for me to decide what to vote for.  But apparently it came off as, "Community sucks and I'm gonna vote for Chuck just to rub it in your face, Yvette  Nicole Brown!!"

I told my friend David this story and this is how he responded: "HAHAHAHAH that's funny. I don't know why you didn't just google it instead of bug her about it though. You crackpot."  Hahahah yes, in hindsight, I certainly WISH I had just googled it instead of asking her about it.  I typed the first tweet without even thinking, because the chances of someone with over 72,000 followers actually SEEING a tweet from you is LOW.  EXTREMELY low.  And once she responded, I just scrambled to tweet her right back again, which clearly was a BAD idea.

So yeah.  I love Community, but I might not ever feel super enthused about Yvette Nicole Brown as a person or actress again after this very strange incident.  Left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.  They say that you should never meet people (or I guess tweet with people?) you're a fan of, because it'll ruin the illusion.  In this case, it seems like the ol' saying was right.  I do always observe that Yvette seems to get pissy with her followers on Twitter pretty regularly, so I should have known better than to tweet her and risk being thrown into "Twitter jail" with those "losers".  Twitter can be a dangerous thing sometimes.