Retweeting compliments just isn't my vibe, sweetlips

There have been various suggestions from great texts and leaders over the centuries about what signs will presage the coming of the apocalypse: "voices, and thunders, and lightnings" (Revelation); the legalisation of gay marriage (Pat Robertson); a painting that talks and steals Sigourney Weaver's baby (Ghostbusters 2).

But these pale in portentousness next to what happened to Lost in Showbiz this week: lo, as the sky darkened and God Himself gazed down with great displeasure, Lost in Showbiz unfollowed Joan Collins on Twitter. Really puts that whole sun burning up into a ball of fire, rivers flooding, blah blah blah, into perspective, doesn't it?

(Incidentally, it's a toss-up which my teenage self would have found more astonishing: me ditching Joanie, or the word "unfollow" being, apparently, an actual word. Oh, crazy modern times!)

It's not just that I have unfollowed "our" Joan that made me reinforce the bunker at the end of the garden, but why I unfollowed her. Joan, look, we've had some great times and I honestly think the world of you. But, babe, it's the way you constantly keep retweeting compliments. It's just not my vibe, sweetlips. It's over.

Before we get on to Joan specifically, and retweeting of compliments in particular, a word about Twitter and the British in general. I've spent time in Britain, studying you people. You might even say I was embedded. (Well, I slept in a bed anyway.) And one of the most surprising things I've seen on Twitter, aside from Mia Farrow displaying an occasional sense of humour, is how eagerly you Brits – you zany Brits! – have taken to self-promotion on Twitter.

I thought British people were allergic to self-promotion or, indeed, any kind of reference to oneself that was not heavily caked in self-deprecation. Doesn't it make you break out in tea rash? Now look at you, instructing your Twitter followers to read your blogs, "check out" your articles, etc. This makes me suspect that Britain and all of its inhabitants have been swallowed up by an apocalyptic fire and replaced by an island of replicants who are planning world domination. Amirite or amirite?

Yet retweeting compliments is to harmless self-promotion what freebasing crack is to marijuana. And, going by this analogy, it grieves me to tell you – although I can't deny that I rather enjoy typing it – that Joan Collins is a crackhead.

For those who are unfamiliar with the ways of Twitter, when someone sends you a public message, only people who follow you both will see it. If you retweet it, all of your followers then see it too. It is like googling yourself, finding all the nice things people have said about you, then sending them out to everyone in your email address book, and possibly a couple of thousand strangers, too. This is clearly not something a normal person would do. It is something only someone who is so desperate for fame that they will guest-"star" in pretty much any old cack on TV and give endless interviews about the state of their sex life would do. Now, who was I speaking of again?

Over the past few weeks, Collins has barely had time to smear Vaseline on the camera lens, so packed has her schedule been with retweeting compliments about her Jeremy Clarkson-lite tome The World According to Joan, from members of the public who possibly ran out of Daily Mail articles to comment on that day.

"So happy The World According to Joan has international delivery. Pre-ordering now!" tweeted someone called BadderDenWicked, which was duly retweeted by the former Alexis Carrington. What was it Norma Desmond said about the pictures getting small?

While Collins – who goes by the endearingly humble Twitter name of @joancollinsobe – has been the most energetic British celebrity retweeter of compliments of late, she is by no means the only one. In order to retweet compliments, one must have a very particular type of personality: ambition coupled with insecurity; egotism matched with neediness; image consciousness paired with a lack of self-awareness; and all topped off with a nigh-on sexual pleasure derived from namedropping. Which brings us to Piers Morgan and Alastair Campbell. When the usual captain of this ship, Marina Hyde, raised just this point about Campbell on Twitter, the former director of communications for 10 Downing Street replied: "I do but a fraction of them – just to show I'm listening ahem." Oh wow! Do you see what he did there? He suggested both modesty and even greater popularity coupled with benevolence, and all in fewer than 140 characters! No wonder New Labour had such a good relationship with the press when a man with those linguistic skills was in the house.

As for Piers, sigh. I am loth to say anything lest I receive another email from Morgan expressing his grave – almost paternal, really – disappointment that I am not better than this "bitchy, ridiculous crap". So let's just say I'm not sure it was really necessary for him to retweet a message of love from director Judd Apatow's 13-year-old daughter, and move on. Swiftly.

Twitter has somehow normalised boasting to such an extent that there are whole new genres of bragging. There's @Humblebrag, for example, the Twitter domain that collects such humility-coated boasts as "It's flattering that when I feel like I look my absolute worst, I get asked out at the farmers market", tweeted by someone called JenniferJV who must be amazingly sexy. I mean, she even gets asked out when she looks bad!

Retweeting compliments is another genre, a Bragbragbrag, if you will. These people don't just need validation – they need their validation validated. It's like an Escher drawing combined with Hieronymus Bosch, with only an "unfollow" button saving us all from witnessing the eternal fire of neediness.

{loadposition user38} source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2011/sep/29/joan-collins-retweeting-twitter-praise

source: http://www.europerank.com/lifestyle/celebrities/56969-sorry-joanie-i-had-to-unfollow-you-–-your-addiction-to-twitter-praise-was-too-much