There's a character limit. That was the initial gimmick. Just think about that for a second. That's it. I think it should be taken to its logical extreme: a service limited to single character posts only. If nothing else, it will teach people kanji…
In the past, if you wanted to believe a celebrity was listening to you, you had to suffer from extreme delusions. Now, all you have to do is suffer from minor delusions and say whatever you want to @REALcelebrity_name. In a way, this probably placates some of the lesser schizophrenics who might otherwise travel great distances to climb over fences to warn Tom Selleck of the lizard people living in his attic. It's much easier to warn him through Twitter, and the crazy can rest assured that this warning will be taken seriously.
While it has cut down on some problems, it has created all-new problems…
A woman on Twitter was brought to my attention because she photographed a friend's license plate and car. The friend was freaked out by this, but there was little reason to be. The woman in question is completely off her meds and also thankfully gave a business card to nearly everyone she talked to (so that was easy). Basically, her Twitter account is pictures of people getting out of and into their cars in random parking lots with text along the lines of “LEAVE ME ALONE” and “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE”, random license plates, people waiting at bus stops, and signs1). In addition, there are screenshots of her “research” on Wikipedia, usually about a recently dead celebrity, usually with 20+ tabs open, aimed at a number of users, usually including the President, sometimes Hilary Clinton, and often a musician, say Katy Perry. Usually the tweet is something like “THIS IS A LIE”, and we're left to fill in the blanks about the vast conspiracy against Robin Williams. Often the tweet is directed as so many people, that she can only put in two or three words of her own and spreads her message across many tweets. Except for a short break where we can guess she's sleeping, she's otherwise doing this all day, every day, somewhere along the lines of 18 tweets/hour.
The best part is, this isn't even particularly rare. There are lots of users like this and they're all sending THE TRUTH to President Trump and Katy Perry. This has to be a serious problem for people, especially some poor son of a bitch at the Secret Service. How do you tell which one of these crazy people is worth monitoring and which are not? None of them sound particularly reasonable and they all sound slightly dangerous. It's even worse for minor e-celebrities, because it only takes one crazy person to really scare the hell out of you and local police don't have the time to bother with with your Internet shit. Is there a call for social media training for mental health professionals? Has it come to this?
Or maybe we should get crazier people on Twitter for our entertainment…