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Eh, I dunno. Twitter puts people/things into the conversation where they may not have been before. For instance...who the hell is Justin Bieber?!?! I still have NO clue and that frigging name is trending every single day every time I look at trending topics. (apparently he's some Canadian child pop star). He's #3 trending topic right now in fact.

For a guy who doesn't pay all that much attention to youth pop culture, Justin Bieber is on my radar now. Unfortunately. Without twitter, he wouldn't be. Yahoo has co-opted a trending thing too and Bieber isn't on there...but another example; Emile de Ravin is trending on yahoo and now I wanna know why. And on and on.

All that being said "Kick-Ass" and twitter aren't really a good match because you can refer to kicking ass or "that burrito was kick-ass" and it won't amount to a wedging in the mind of public opinion.

I think Dave's point is that while things may be trending and people may be adding to that trending by trying to find out why its trending in the first place... it's not resulting in any substantial changes in consumption habits.

"Media mentions" is a metric that I absolutely loathe in PR terms because it relies on two assumptions - "any press is good press" and "all press mentions are equal". It's not true. Simple recognition bias (choosing the thing you recognize over the thing you don't) has an incredibly steep diminishing returns curve, and context is incredibly important to building brand associations that consumers find valuable as opposed to those they don't. The whole point of (commercial) comms is to build equity that then translates to performance improvement - if I engaged an agency who spent 3 months on a campaign that had no noticeable impact on revenues but they claimed it was a success because it trended to #2 on Twitter, I'd never pay for their services again.

Also... did Justin Bieber become part of the greater awareness because of Twitter or did Twitter become aware of him because he was already being marketed?

And when you spend money on a Justin Bieber song (he's a singer, right?) because he trended on Twitter, call me.

I had never heard of the Bieber kid until there was some incident involving a bunch of his fans at some signing event out in New York or New Jersey.

I'm just saying it puts you in the convo but you're both obviously right in terms of chicken and the egg...

Not saying I'm proud to know this, because I am JEALOUS AS FUCK of the little fucker, but Justin Bieber's been a pretty big entertainment news story for some time now, for "plugged-in" guys like Poland and Lewis to only just be hearing about him via Twitter.

I KNOW the 35-and-up "white guy" attitude towards pop culture that you disdain is, "If I haven't heard of it, it can't be THAT big or important." And, yes, he's just some cheeseball 15 or 16 year old who MADE A YOUTUBE VIDEO, got signed by a label, is a MILLIONAIRE, and dates SELENA GOMEZ.

These aren't facts that only the readership of Tiger Beat is privvy too; Little bastard's been on the news, on morning shows, on talk shows, on the New Year's Eve celebration... surely been parodied or tossed around by SNL or The Soup or Handler.

But it's EXACTLY the kind of thing if you mention it to any CAUCASIAN 30-SOMETHING IN L.A., ie the types who live in the most multiethnic city in the universe but don't have any Armenian, Filipino, or Latino friends, only hang out with other white people and haven't listened to radio or current music in 12 years... when you mention a Justin Bieber you get crickets then if you try to explain it they do a fingers in ears LA LA LA LA I DON'T EVEN WANNA KNOW ABOUT THAT.

Which is UNDERSTANDABLE, but the fact REMAINS, Justin Bieber could bang models and tax actresses and is indeed dating a CUTE FAMOUS CHICK. YOU ARE NOT. I AM NOT.

THIS IS WHAT I WANT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU TO BE ANGRIER ABOUT.

How does it not DECIMATE YOUR VERY SOUL that Sam Worthington is Sam Worthington, and You are You?

I WANT SERIOUS ANSWERS. How do you accept this and live with it without drugs and alcohol?

I DEMAND TO KNOW. NOW.

Because 1) you could ask 100 people at the Grove who Sam Worthington is and 95 of them will give you a blank stare, and 2) Sam Worthington could walk into the Grove and 95 out of 100 people would not recognize him. I'm quite content not being Sam Worthington, especially as I did not have to spend several months waking up every morning knowing that I would have to spend the day dealing with McG or James Cameron.

WORTHINGTON.

I don't know, I am Sam Worthington and it's no big deal. Don't get me wrong, I like fucking the models, but beyond that, all of this Hollywood stuff is such a hassle..."sign this check, please endorse this, please have a threeway with us even though only one of us is hot."

Man, it's for the birds.

1992 Jim Carrey wants his threeway joke back, Big Mencia.

I'm going to answer Lex's question:

Because I'm not an incredibly lame person in need of extreme therapy.

Not in need of therapy?

Hmm, maybe you should get those anger issues looked at. You really are a wholesale negative person. Never can I remember you geeking out about anything, being excited or positive about anything...

Say what you will about my antics and indulgences, there's NEVER a doubt that I TRULY LOVE FILM and am EXCITED ABOUT FILM. This is fact. It is infectious. I'm like Tarantino in that I'm giddy like a schoolboy each and every time I go to the movies, I like almost everything I see and I love actors and directors.

I can probably count on one hand the # of times Jeffmcm has ever been positive or ENTHUSIASTIC about anything, ever.

And when I saw him on line at the Arclight popcorn line on AVATAR opening day with his posse of gay men, when I was STANDING RIGHT BEHIND HIM and he didn't even notice, he had this dried-out look of a wan, tight-lipped hardon who never enjoys anything, ever.

He's like the least fun gay man ever.

"I KNOW the 35-and-up "white guy" attitude towards pop culture that you disdain is, "If I haven't heard of it, it can't be THAT big or important.""

A couple of years ago, one of the pro wrestlers in WWE was in the unfortunate position that the show writers didn't know what to do with him and so was in danger of being released. He came up with a character based on Jack Sparrow, complete with cheesy "rope swing" entrance, eye makeup and bad accents. It was a hit with the fans who would go crazy for his live appearances.

A month or two later, the owner of WWE nixed the character and a while later the wrestler was released. His reason? He'd never seen Pirates of the Caribbean and assumed no-one else had either.

A good case for Dave's "twitter effect is BS" point came up last night when Dave Mustaine was trending and I couldn't figure out why. I naturally assumed he had died. So when I used twitter to find out what was up all I got was hundreds of "why is Dave Mustaine trending?!?" so...

Then again, I could go for some Megadeth all of a sudden...

I don't "tweet" or use Twitter or follow anyone's Twitter account, so I could be completely wrong here. Isn't Twitter just a different way to let your friends know what you think of something? So rather than call or email them, or wait until you see them in person, you use Twitter to express your opinion? I can't imagine it's going to have much sway on a movie's box office. It's not like most people are sitting around on a Friday night or Saturday, waiting for their friend to tweet about Shutter Island before deciding whether or not to rush out and see it. Are droves of people going to change their weekend plans because of what someone tweets?

Twitter is still dumb.

The irony of the situation is that social media created a way for people to get information, like film reviews, from like-minded individuals and people they trusted, as opposed to a random film critic with drastically different taste. If the "Twitter Effect" were to really exist, it would be two steps backwards -- not only are you getting a film review from a random individual, but this random individual is writing the review with no credibility and in 144 characters or less.

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