Twitter love: celebrity romance in the age of social media

Fabricated romance, scripted passion - if your name is Ken and Barbie or Shane and Elizabeth, chances are the passive onlooker is getting more than their money's worth of titillation from your couplings at the moment.

Follow spin king Shane Warne and actress Liz Hurley on Twitter and you can get blow by blow updates of their love tryst downunder – everything from breathless recounts of the media chase that follows their every move, to requests for where to eat for lunch (to refuel after all those hours of lust, one presumes).

Global love knows no boundaries in the age of social media. When love letters are passé, and private emails can be read via anonymous hackers, why not embrace the spotlight and just conduct your affair via Twitter, where your heart-felt musings can be read by anyone and followed by hundreds of thousands of fans?

Barbie and Ken are more than plastic toys - they are celebrity simulacra in this age of Twitter love. According to USA Today; “Barbie and Ken both have extensive social footprints - Barbie is somewhat of a social veteran, but Ken has only recently kicked up his online game.”

Our plastic couple is indeed a lot like Warnie and Hurley, who have been conducting their romance firmly in the public eye, with Shane sharing the latest details with his 318,000 followers on Twitter. Indeed, both couples are living out their flirtations in public, with Warnie and Hurley and Ken and Barbie conducting negotiations (or assignations?) on Twitter and asking anyone to join in the fun.

You can vote of whether you think their romance stands a chance or not. If you care enough on the outcome of Ken and Barbie’s love, go to www.barbieandken.com where you can have your say. Currently, the Love-O-Meter is resting on “Give him a chance”.

Likewise, you can read about the “Ten reasons Shane Warne and Liz Hurley will make it (and ten reasons they won't)” www.news.com.au (Feb9)

Actress Elizabeth Hurley’s visit to Shane Warne’s Melbourne home is big news in Australia. Media has been made to suffer. Pity the poor hacks on the watch for any sign of movement at the station (aka Shane Warne’s palatial residence in the upmarket suburb of Brighton). They had to stand at the gates, trying to peer in (hard when the Twitter extrovert had erected privacy screens around the perimeter).

Not all were impressed, either. As Karl Quinn reported in The Age; “Not all had come willingly: one hack was heard to ask why anybody ''would give a damn about a B-grade actress and an A-grade bogan''. It was a fair question, but one in search of an answer that the alphabetical couple seemed in no hurry to provide. (Feb 10)”

Call me a cynic, but the very public "romance" currently being played out in the traditional and social media between Ken and Barbie and Warnie and Hurley is simply about profile raising and sales.

Simply conducting a public liaison becomes a news story in itself. And an amusing one at that - gone are the days of the paparazzi stalking celebrities; now “Shane Warne has become the first celebrity to invade his own privacy” as he tweets lunch plans with Hurley on her Melbourne visit.” (The Australian, 11 Feb)

Mattel Inc. want to move plastic toys and media organisations want to sell papers and airtime on the back of the Warnie and Hurley romance. And the ordinary punter - they want gossip and they want to live vicariously through others game enough to put their hand up for love and that rush of blood to the head that is romance.

As for the (real life) couple? The Herald Sun's Susie O'Brien says; "Although this love affair is apparently real, it's also doing great things for their careers, and their egos." (Feb 11)

As For Ken and Barbie, they’ve had a tough time with their popularity. They aren’t the hot selling toys they once were. A few years ago, they had a big slump, and Barbie had to endure a lot of plastic surgery when she hit the big 5-0 in 2009, when Mattel celebrated her milestone birthday “by giving the pneumatic blonde a new look, complete with thinner jaw line, almond-shaped eyes and fuller lips.” (thaindian.com 25 December 2009)

While every middle aged woman can feel for Barbie, the surgery seems to have worked - sales have increased and she has held onto her new lover, Blaine, who came onto the scene after she and Ken split in 2004. Now it’s Ken’s turn to suffer the midlife crisis - while he had good hair in his youth - long, thick and dark - his dress sense has always been on the camp side of fashionable. With his 50th birthday this year comes the aggressive marketing campaign to get him back in the public eye and back together with his old flame Barbie.

Can Ken and Barbie rekindle their passion? They have been through so much together, even if they have found solace in other arms. Maybe they have enough in common to make it work again - toned, hard plastic bodies, white teeth, extensive wardrobes and a love of social media.

Will the romance between Shane and Liz last - to Easter? Do they have enough in common - deep tans, carefully placed highlights, toned bodies and very white teeth, not to mention a love of the spotlight - to make theirs the love story of the decade?

Right now, as you read this, Ken is trying to win Barbie back with billboards in Southern California that read “Barbie, we may be plastic but our love is real."

Warnie couldn't have texted it better himself.

Evelyn Tsitas is a PhD student at RMIT University. Email: evelyntsitas@gmail.com

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