Dear Conan O'Brien, I Feel Used

By Zach Dionne Posted Mar 11th 2010 05:30PM

Pop-Ed: Conan O'Brien's doing a comedy tour? Yeow! But did he use his Twitter to sucker us all, getting half a million followers to feed into one big, sneaky promotional device?

Conan took to the Twittersphere two weeks ago and amassed a tremendous following at an alarming pace. It was the event-like nature of his tweets that made his page the talk of the Internet -- blogs were fashioning entire posts to recap Big Red's individual tweets. When Conan chose to follow one solitary person on Twitter, everyone -- us included -- was chomping at the bit to talk to her, to hear how Conan's avant garde Twitter strategy had changed the gal's life (no foolin' -- it actually changed her life).

For two weeks, no one knew what Lindsay Lohan scandal was coming up next, or what new miracle would postpone Lil Wayne's jail time, or what Heidi Montag was going to say about her boobs, but we all knew one thing: Conan would tweet once per day, and it would make us smile. Probably even laugh. It felt like Coco had found a new way to keep us plugged into his singular sense of humor, and even if the one-tweet-per-day routine had carried on a while with no signs of a TV show, we would've been alright with that. It was kinda nice.

That all came crashing down today. The Wizard of Oz is not so wizardly at all; he may merely be a funny guy on Twitter, beckoning us further and further into the land of laughs until -- BOOM! -- "Hey, ya wanna buy some comedy tickets, son? Good, 'cause I'm gonna tweet alllll day about it, and tack 'half-assed' jokes onto the end of what are truly only promotional blasts."

Go ahead, tell me "it's just Twitter." The fact remains that Conan seemed to have chosen to do things differently, to show us a new side of this site we love. I mean, c'mon, Conan -- I followed the spinoff Twitters for your squirrel, your beard, your ATM card, your Sharpie and your stinking Ford Taurus -- only to end up feeling like it was a long con for you to swindle me into your comedy tour? Granted, you're a funny, funny man, and I want to see your live show regardless, but this "I'm going to do Twitter a tad differently except, oh wait, I'm really not" bit has left a bad taste in my mouth. Comparatively, he's done no more self-promotional wrong than anyone on Twitter, but five tour-related tweets in as many hours tipped the balance.

Even if Conan takes his Twitter back to the way things were (and I'm sure he will -- I'm sure his feed won't become an exclusively self-promotional spot), it'll never be the same. I feel used.

Tags: conan obrien

Comments

(44)

Thursday 11 March

By Elephant remembers

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I remember that, on his first late show, many years ago, Conan said that one of these days he'd be old and have a big forhead. Now he's really, really old....and look at him!!!

Sunday 14 March

By Red

Very funny and very true :o)

By Wendy

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Oh well...people get old. It's what we all do!! I like Conan. Always have!! I can't wait to see him on tv again!!

By Uncle Grambo

Well, to be fair, those other "spin-off" handles were all fan-made fakes. Other than that, though, you pretty much nailed it. Conan's recent embrace of Twitter has always felt forced and phony to me, especially considering the dubious manner in which he treated the service during his brief and forgettable reign on THE TONIGHT SHOW. I'm certainly not a Team Leno dude by any stretch, but I can't really get on Team Coco, either.

By Mike

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You are ridiculous. Many people who added Conan on Twitter, Facebook, etc were interested to see his future plans and what he would do next. This is it. He's an entertainer. Of course he's going to promote himself. What were you expecting?

By Chris

I totally agree with Mike (above). However, I also wanted to add that Zach is an idiot.

By Grrr

Congratulations Zach, for posting the stupidest article I've read in ages.

By RITA

Zack...You are doing EXACTLY what you have acused conon of.
So, if this is your best....Get a job.

By Marge

I will never understand what you people see in Conan, I think he and Andy Richter stink!

By thom

I'll never understand why people like Leno... or American Idol... or Sarah Palin... or a lot of things.

Maybe people - GASP! - simply have differing opinions on things? I know, shocking, isn't it?

By Jim

You are right Marge conan sucks always has and always will hes not funny just stupid!!!!

Friday 12 March

By Stevex

I truly enjoy it when some punctuation-challenged moron calls someone 'stupid'.

By Marc

1) He never said he wasn't going to use it like this. Anything to the contrary was in your head.

2) If Conan hadn't tweeted about it, I wouldn't have been able to get tickets to his show. And I wanted tickets to his show.

3) It'd be weird if he DIDN'T promote himself this way. He's not allowed on TV. How else would he get the word out?

By jpuzzlewhiz

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Excuse me? Did I miss something, somewhere?

Where was it reported that Conan O'Brien could not promote himself on TV?

By Pat

Dude you sound like an angry ex Jehovah Witness who just woke up from your mindless admiration. Conan's an entertainer, not your friend, not your brother, no you can't wear his skin. In your own words you admit all the other celebs are using it to promote, but you thought "not my conan!" You've looked at his picture and needed cleenex, and not for tears, haven't you? Get help, before you start killing small animals, K?

By kellnerc7

In the backstabbing world of show biz, one has to look after number one. What else is new?

By now4better

Boy, you crazy kids are nutso, right? In the 60s, they protested the war, fought for civil rights and caused social upheaval, in the 70s they ended the war and got into metal and then really freaked out in disco and then those days bled into the eighties when punks rebelled against the whole rotted culture. the 90s had the grungy last gasp. Now the kids have twitter and gadgets and toys they look DOWN at while they drive. They measure status by the size of . . . their telephone's screen. The Internet is cool, but the Internet generation is a bunch of brainwashed bots. Zach, you need deprogramming. And a life.

By Eric

Would you like some cheese with this overly dramatic whine?

You're an idiot if you didn't think he was going to parlay the twitter popularity into something he could use during his NBC forced tv blackout. He's smart and anyone with half a brain would know that he had something in the works and he'd be dumb not to strike while the iron is still hot.

Who cares if he deliberately started twittering to drum up interest? He has no way to test the waters since he can't appear anywhere on tv. If you are truly a fan of him you'd be happy that this following is going to allow him to keep interest up and increase his chances of getting a show somewhere, once the NBC ban on tv is over.

So take your poor "violated" self and find something real to whine about.

Also have to say that, while I think he's a smart guy, I really don't think there was any way he could know the reception he'd get on twitter or that people would go so nuts over his random following stunt. I think he's just going with the flow and taking advantage of whatever he can.

By Sarah

Name me a celebrity that utilizes NO self promotion. Although few used twitter to the capabilities that Conan did, other celebrities aren't in the weird predicament that he is.

And I don't feel used. I thank goodness I got a text with his tweet yesterday. I bought awesome tix because of the heads up.

See you in Tulsa May 15, Conan :D

By PhanDaMan

Hey Zach... you may need to give up writing and find a job at the local McDonalds in hopes of one day moving into a managerial position! Writing isn't for you! Now... if you had done some research and read some material before you wrote your articles... then maybe you wouldn't be needing to look for a McJob!

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