1. 50 Cent (@50CENT)
Sample tweet by the Twitter account @50CENT from August 2: “Thanks to my lovely ladies of the Today show @hodakotb @sarahaines @klgandhoda for having me!” Now one from August 27: “Bitch why you say I shoulda went to schoolI can buy a dam school you went to hoe fuck you Ya dog, funky bitch.” What happened? At some point in August, the rapper/actor seems to have reclaimed the strings from his Twitter puppetmasters. It hasn’t been an easy transition. The day before the aforementioned “funky bitch” tweet, 50 had his Twitpic account suspended for posting inappropriate images. (He now uses Plixi.) But that incident didn’t dim his enthusiasm for Twitter, which he has since used to ask for sexy pictures from fans, conduct an ongoing flirtation with Chelsea Handler, and post words of wisdom like this: “thats the last time im ever getting on a bike im ridding a mother f**king dog came running after me.”
2. Jim Carrey (@JIMCARREY)
For all his eager-to-please energy and earnest self-examination, Jim Carrey has remained a weirdly unknowable celebrity. He shares with Robin Williams and Jerry Lewis both a compulsive need to entertain and a tendency to plumb into melancholy depths, which has probably helped him develop an impressive range as an actor. Carrey’s soulfulness and good intentions make themselves evident in ways both admirable—as with his support for pro-democracy movements in Burma—and suspect: He stood by then-girlfriend Jenny McCarthy as she became a mouthpiece for the factually challenged Generation Rescue effort, which posits a connection between autism and vaccines. Whatever you think of Carrey, he’s a fascinatingly unpredictable personality.
Jim Carrey on Twitter is all that only multiplied in intensity. He doesn’t so much condense his thoughts as supersaturate them into any given tweet’s 140 characters, then round them out with strange emoticons. That was always the case, whether Carrey chose to wax philosophical or go for laughs. But things took a turn this spring. First, Carrey announced his split with McCarthy on Twitter on April 6. Then he caught some flak for suggesting Elin Nordegren was complicit in her husband’s infidelity, which then, per Carrey’s feed, led to his representation suggesting he tone it down, a suggestion met with a joke about being sexually assaulted by Ben Roethlisberger. Then he announced his “death” and that he would be survived by “the actual Jim Carrey, who has opinions about stuff.” Then came boing. Or, more accurately, BOING. On April 24, Carrey announced “There’s only one word that can describe my life and that is BOING!!!” From there, the word became a catch-all philosophical term/hashtag/WTF-ism for Carrey’s essence in Tweets like “Any #BOING of yours is a #BOING of mine! {B^)” and “It’s odd when u catch a glimpse of your #BOING in a fun house mirror but u can’t enter a fun house without it! %^.” Carrey took a long Twitter hiatus over the summer, but when he came back he brought BOING with him. “Send me pics of your #BOING or some1 elses #BOING Capture the essence of #BOING itself!,” Carrey wrote on Nov. 12, continuing “(no genitals pls) ~8^}€=;.”
3. Courtney Love (@CourtneyLoveUK, @colove1)
For a professional over-sharer like Courtney Love, Twitter is both a dangerous place and a perfect platform. The fact that she’s completely unfiltered (“noone needs to see my vajazzle”) offers a window into her soul for fans and detractors alike, with the latter probably having a lot more fun. It’s tough not to think her public persona—massively narcissistic trainwreck—isn’t some ploy to get a reality show, but if she’s faking this kind of insanity, she’s really good at it. Not only that, she shares her world over two separate Twitter accounts, because one can’t contain things like screeds against Guitar Hero for (legally) using Kurt Cobain’s image, or a kajillion photos of, you guessed it, Courtney Love. Shockingly, she only has about 90,000 followers at this point. You’d think there’d be more vultures on Twitter than that, just standing by waiting for something ugly to happen.
4. Billy Corgan (@Billy)
Courtney Love’s former paramour (and lone original Smashing Pumpkin) Billy Corgan knows a few things about how to be crazy on Twitter, too. Not only did he use the service to dis Love (“if you can't write your own songs maybe you should just be happy that you fooled someone into doing your work for you”), but he also spends much of his presumably valuable time on life lessons (“Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be able to share my life/thoughts/prayers/hopes with so many people, but today isn't one of those days”) that appear to gush forth from a self-help manual. And then there’s the paranoid nonsense: “New thing in LA today: triple chemtrails. I guess they just aren’t killing us fast enough…” And then it’s back to the narcissism: “In a van in Chile listening to Pearl Jam on the radio. Just realized this song is a rip off of a SP song!! Curse you Vedder!!! LOL x.” It’s a fascinating glimpse into the life of a man who “belong[s] in the conversation about the best artists in the world” (according to, umm, himself).
5. Scott Baio (@ScottBaio)
Scott Baio has spent years contending with his faded celebrity, even creating a reality show (Confessions Of A Teen Idol) in which the former star of Happy Days and Charles In Charge could commiserate with other faded celebrities. So it’s no surprise that his Twitter feed continues Baio’s occasionally hostile relationship with his own notoriety, with him often openly insulting the people who bait him. (A sample Scott Baio retort: “at least I know how to spell you’re dumb ass. Last time I checked I’ve been working since age 9, you were prob shitting yourself.”) Many of these online enemies were made with a single tweet, when Baio (a vocal conservative) posted an unflattering photo of Michelle Obama in early 2010, saying, “WOW He wakes up to this every morning.” (It has since been deleted.) But that was nothing compared to Baio’s nasty dust-up with Jezebel: After the feminist website reposted a tweet from Baio joking about how his taxes would “provide medical for quite a few lazy non working people at my expense,” Baio responded by repeatedly calling Jezebel a rag and reminding its female staff (in Italian) that “the broom and dustpan are in the closet.” Then Baio’s wife, Renee, got involved, branding Jezebel a “bunch of FAR LEFT lesbian shitasses” on her Facebook page, sparking a social-networking apocalypse that spilled outward into the trending hashtag “#scottbaioruinseverything” and someone changing Baio’s Wikipedia page to define him as the Antichrist. Not that any of this bothered Baio, particularly. After all, like Scott Baio and absolutely no one else always says, “Trolls should go play leap frog with a unicorn!!!”
6. Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone)
For the most part, Sylvester Stallone’s Twitter feed mirrors his movies, filled with workout scenes, affably dumb comic observations, and the occasional faux-profound sentiment about believing in yourself. But earlier this year, he earned a place on this list for mixing an otherwise well-intentioned call to civic duty with the bizarre theory that Barack Obama is a “Manchurian Candidate”—referencing, in Stallone’s words, the “movie about fake president who was put there by foreign enemies to destroy America.” Leaving aside that this is not the plot of The Manchurian Candidate, Stallone’s call to “rise up” garnered a lot of negative attention, so much so that he attempted to clarify his remark by first saying hey, he was just “mixing it up.” (“Getting the blood going! Makes ya passionate, don,t it. Good! Happy with things? OPINIONS?”) He then began silencing his critics with the ultimate comeback: “Written any produced screenplays lately?” But after the controversy spread beyond Twitter, Stallone backed away from the idea that he was targeting Obama specifically, moving on to condemning all political parties as well as “lobbist[s].” Finally, tired of fighting, the erstwhile Rocky dropped down his gloves and disingenuously brushed the whole thing off as “just trying to find some twisted humor during these difficult times.” His battle of ideological wills thus totally resolved, Stallone has since avoided anything controversial, sticking primarily to providing updates on his next action movie—which is really all anyone wants to hear from Sylvester Stallone.
7. Kelsey Grammer (@kelsey_grammer)
With 39,000 followers and all of the Internet at his disposal, the star of “Frasier, Cheers, and more” (according to his description, in case you forgot) uses Twitter largely to say hi to people. As in, “Hi @username!” or “Hello @username!,” or the always popular “Pecan crusted chicken your making me hungry @mike_neylan.” His pattern is predictable and unflattering, as are his outbursts of excitement any time anyone makes even the vaguest mention of something Frasier- or Frasier-reunion-related. He also seems to think Follow Friday is some sort of holiday, what for all the times he wishes “Happy Follow Friday.” Mysteriously, Grammer took a four-month break without explanation, but is back to tweeting at his “social friends” and cryptically thanking followers for lord-knows-what.
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8. Stan Lee (@therealstanlee)
As the patriarch of Marvel Comics and the co-creator of everyone from Spider-Man to Iron Man to the X-Men, Stan Lee has a lifetime pass to be as goofy as he wants. And he uses that pass daily—not just by foisting shows like Stan Lee’s Superhumans on the world, but by babbling on Twitter as if it were his own personal superpower. Writing in the faux-Shakespearian language favored by another of his characters, The Mighty Thor, and punctuating everything with his signature sign-off, “Excelsior!,” Lee refers to himself in the third person (often calling himself The Generalissimo) and peppers his tweets with fond recollections of his many movie cameos—in particular, his appearance in Mall Rats. Granted, the 87-year-old Lee once held court among his minions via his Bullpen Bulletins in the old Marvel Comics, so running off at the ego is hardly new to him; it’s always been part of his relentless self-mythology. Or as Lee himself recently tweeted: “Judge not a warrior by his fireplace, pipe, or easy chair. Judge him instead by his prowess in battle—and the might of his tweets!”
9. Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco)
The former MLB All-Star/juicehead has been trying to start a second career are a mixed-martial-arts fighter in the past few years, to middling success. His Twitter feed is a sort of paean to his increasing desperation: He hawks memorabilia for auction (or “ouction”), stumps for gigs (“I am looking for a local tanning place and a 24 hour gum that I can endorse”; “Mlb needs me to to a manager I am ready.”), and regularly engages “haters,” whom he gives a phone number to call “if you have the balls,” noting “You will be charged a small fee half of it will go to charity.” Clearly Canseco has never heard of playing hard to get—or of The Situation, who surely has all the gym-and-tanning endorsement deals sewn up—and the repetitiveness of his Twitter feed suggests a borderline-obsessive personality: Besides the constant hater-baiting (“Hey stupid my testosterone levels are at 159”), he has a tendency to pick a theme and repeat it for tweets on end, such as the dozens of messages offering/requesting hugs and talking about how much he loves his girlfriend, not to mention several aimed at consoling Tiger Woods. (“Tiger woods a big hug to you and your family from me I have always admired you and know what your going through.”)
10. Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt)
It’s a bit of a cheat to include Spencer Pratt on this list, since, like fellow fame-whores Heidi Montag and Tila Tequila, a good portion of his questionable fame is based on the sort of self-generated controversy Twitter enables. But whereas figures like Montag and Tequila usually maintain a PR-friendly balance of self-promotion and fan-friendly schmoozing, Pratt is aggressively weird, unlikable, and borderline psychotic, rendering his Twitter feed into a can’t-look-away trainwreck. His rampant overtweeting aside—one day in June, he posted hundreds of messages in under 24 hours—Pratt’s feed is a heady blend of narcissism (“The new book will be equal parts Tolstoy & Hemingway. Maybe less Tolstoy than Hemingway.”), questionable jokes (“Juicy Fruit. The most homosexual of the gum varieties.”), weird spirituality (“Remember, your thoughts are sent out on a magnetic frequency into the Universe.”), desperation (“@MTV thanks for the job. In the market for another job please let me know if you need any reality stars. I am open to playing a ‘Hero’”), and allusions to his money woes. (“Platinum is no longer on the budget LOL.”) If only he were paid per tweet.
11. Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith)
However you feel about the films of Kevin Smith, his ability to cultivate a fan base, especially online, is beyond dispute: The View Askewniverse refers not only to the mythology that’s been built around his characters, but various destinations (ViewAskew.com, the “Smodcast,” et al.) for like-minded film and comics geeks to come together—if not in perfect harmony, then at least in remarkable force. Smith’s accessibility to fans (and non-fans) is key: He seems keenly aware of everything written about him on the Internet, and he’s unusually generous in responding to it. On message boards, it’s a treat for people to hear directly from such a major cult of personality; on Twitter, it’s exhausting. Following Smith’s Twitter feeds mean committing to a maelstrom of drive-by retweet/replies to various inquiries, so even the most minute question or bit of praise is broadcast to all 1.72 million followers. His feed is certainly lively—e.g. his recent jihads against film critics and Southwest Airlines—but it breaches Twitter etiquette in way only hardcore fans can endure.
12. Buzz Bissinger (@buzzbissinger)
Until his infamous appearance on Costas Now, where he launched into a profane, spittle-filled, anti-blog rant against then-Deadspin.com editor Will Leitch—he later apologized, and the two are now on friendly terms—Buzz Bissinger was known mainly as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Friday Night Lights and other highly respected works of sports writing. The Bissinger of Costas Now may be repentant, but he’s not dead: Bissinger’s Twitter feed is gloriously unhinged, channeling raw opinions on sports, politics, and whatever else might be angering him on any given day. Without the slightest regard to how his words might affect his literary reputation, Bissinger lashes out at various figures (the term “douche juice” is his), including subjects from his books, like St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa (for attending a Glenn Beck rally with slugger Albert Pujols) and LeBron James (for The Decision). Bissinger is aware of his problem: He talked about it on a great episode of Bill Simmons’ B.S. Report podcast, and he goes for long stretches without tweeting. But when he’s on, it’s the most riveting trainwreck on Twitter.
13. Adam Baldwin (@adamsbaldwin)
As politically engaged celebrities go, Chuck/Firefly/My Bodyguard bruiser Adam Baldwin is no dummy; he clearly stays informed, voraciously reading anything that reinforces his fiercely libertarian point of view. Then Baldwin links to those articles, in feverish tweet-sessions that go on for hours. For example, between 11:41 a.m. and 1:10 p.m. on Dec. 2, 2010, Baldwin tweeted 10 times—roughly once every nine minutes—posting links to articles about tax reform, Eric Holder, the lazy unemployed, ill-informed liberal entertainers and more, usually with his own brief comments like, “Nanny Statism!” and “Fraud Or ‘Racism’?!” Baldwin also makes time to mix it up with other celebrity tweeters—Steven Weber is a common target—as well as followers who take issue with his posts, nearly always responding to critics with a sneering tone that would make even Animal Mother a little nervous.
14. John Cusack (@johncusack)
Lest anyone think right-wing celebrities have a monopoly on embarrassing Twitter feeds, witness John Cusack. He attracted Twitter notoriety with a largely all-caps tweet asking for “A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES ORDICK ARMEYAND NEWT GINGRINCH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS.” Cusack explained it as a joke about the Ground Zero mosque controversy, which makes sense, however tone-deaf a joke. (Calling for the death of your enemies usually doesn’t get laughs.) The scandal blew over, but it did call attention to Cusack’s shockingly poor grasp of the English language and basic typing skills, which does little to back up his political beliefs. Some highlights: “taht’s the gop philospy.. gourge the stae while claiming to be rugged individuaist who live by the free market” and “for the endless impetial war that wont filll you up and never lets you down —blackwater light ! we’re buying every round forever” and “why is worst thing a troll threatens is if u xpress beliefs- he wont see my movies— i dontt care-go back to watching Steven Segal Lawman.” So, for the record, Cusack opposes gop pholospy and impetial wars. And if you don’t like it, you can go watch Steven Segal, who we think must be George Segal’s action-star brother or something.