Following his impossibly stupid Joe Paterno/Penn State tweet last night and the often hilarious reaction to it, Ashton Kutcher has come to a realization, you guys: a Twitter account is simply too much for him to handle on his own.
Minutes ago Kutcher published a three-paragraph post explaining his controversial tweet and why he’s turning over management of his Twitter account to his media team going forward, a post that actually makes himself look even more like a hapless dolt.
Up until today I have posted virtually everyone of my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become to big to be managed by a single individual. When I started using twitter it was a communication platform that people could say what they are thinking in real time and and if their facts where wrong the community would quickly and helpfully reframe an opinion. It was a conversation, a community driven education tool, and opionion center that encouraged healthy debate. It seems that today that twitter has grown into a mass publishing platform, where ones tweets quickly become news that is broadcated around the world and misinformation becomes volitile fotter for critics.
Last night after returning home from work 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 fullfilled 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 when 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 when back on my twitter account and found a hailstorm of responses calling me an “idiot” and several other explitives 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 peoples outrage at my misinformed post. I truely am sorry if I offended anyone and more over am going to take action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
A collection of over 8 million followers is not to be taken for granted. I feel responsible for delivering an informed opinion and not spreading gossip or rumors through my twitter feed. While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I’ve come to realize that it has grown into more that a fun tool to communicate with people. 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 Media to ensure the quality of it’s content. My sincere apologies to anyone who I offended. It was a mistake that I don’t think will not happen again.
Seriously, could he not get someone on his media team to proofread and edit this? F*CKING SPELLCHECK THAT SH*T DUDE!
Still, Kutcher is completely missing a point I made in an earlier post about all this: you’re supposed to know about these sorts of things, dude. You’re an anti-child sex abuse activist, REMEMBER? How can you say that up until seeing a blurb about the scandal on Sportscenter last night you had no clue as to what was going on and still expect people to take your activism seriously. Your credibility is completely shot.
Unless he’s been in a coma or shipwrecked on a small island in the Pacific with a professor and his wife due to a three-hour tour gone awry, Kutcher would have had to made a Herculean effort not to know about this. I’m talking completely disconnected from the world — no Twitter, Facebook, TV, newspapers…NOTHING. Look, it’s football season, and if Ashton Kutcher is like most football fans during football season, he goes to sleep at night with ESPN on his television and wakes up to it in the morning. Granted, ESPN’s coverage of the scandal has been, by its own admission, sub-par, it’s been all over the channel for the past few days. Trust me on this.
Which is why I’m of the opinion that he’s full of sh*t. I think he expressed sympathy for Paterno in an ineloquent way, he got burned, and now he’s trying to make it all better — but in reality he’s making himself look like a bigger fool, not to mention a coward. What’s he’s done in the past few hours basically is to communicate to the world that he’s too dumb and uninformed to maintain his own Twitter account, rather than just say, “You know what guys, I’m so sorry…I was saddened by the news of Paterno’s downfall and I didn’t think my tweet all the way through.” Real talk.
Now, in other Penn State child rape-related news, the scandal got the Taiwanese animation treatment any scandal worth its salt deserves!
Now, since all of this stuff stemming from football is incredibly depressing, go play Fantasy Football at With Leather this weekend and win some money!