For my social media celebrity, I have chosen George Takei. The man is an icon is so many ways, from being a huge impact in the LGBTQA+ community to his work in beginning other social media movements, such as the way he blatantly speaks out against the tyrannical acts of Donald Trump. Personally speaking, I find that throughout his lifetime, he has been quite the impressive celebrity. His most famous work before becoming an outspoken social justice icon was done in acting. While he was on Star Trek, George Takei has also directed plays and random as it may sound, is a master fencer.
He is most well known on social media for both his serious social and political issues but also for sharing viral videos of cats and generally wholesome content. His Facebook url is right here with an astounding 10,377,872 likes. His twitter url is here with a following of 2.87 million people. He himself follows 670 people and posted about 32,000 tweets full of the most emotionally grabbing content. George Takei joined twitter back in January 2011. On instagram, his username is georgehtakei with 1.1 million followers, 1,089 posts, and following 276 people himself.
George Takei most definitely has the largest following on his Facebook page. The profile picture is a cartoonized version of his face which is definitely welcoming, as much as it is amusing. His cover photo is almost like an advertisement banner as it typically shows something about to come out in theaters or an event coming up. This time, it is advertising his upcoming play called ‘Allegiance’ which is about the concentration camps located in the western United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It is a personal play to George, as he and his family were relocated to a camp during his childhood. Japanese internment camps played such a large role in his views on the world. Growing up Japanese-American in the United States during that time would prove to be him and his family’s biggest struggle.
The ‘about’ tab consists of a fairly concise biography, links to his official website, and how to email him directly. His most popular timeline posts consist of political arguments. A few others are simply wholesome viral videos, while the rest are just links to articles. Many of these posts are originally posted by George Takei, but the meme related content is sometimes reshared instead. The page itself occasionally likes other pages, but rarely.
Overall, George Takei’s Facebook is fairly well done and run. It includes its fair share of bringing up serious topics in a professional manner, as well as posts that aren’t so serious. With his incredible amount of followers, much more responsibility falls into his hands. The audience is well aware of this, as they interact very directly. Looking towards his five most recent posts, the comments section is honestly quite wild. Slurs make their way through the comments most of the posts or just generally hateful posts and replies. Other times, though rare, funny and intriguing comments can also be found. A lot of the time however, comment sections are simply full of people tagging friend and family to read an article or watch a video.
Looking into George Takei’s twitter, it is systematically run almost identical to his Facebook page. His profile picture is the same cartoon style design of himself, but this time, he is holding up a sign that says “Dump Trump”. His banner is also the same exact as his Facebook, which advertises his new play ‘Allegiance’, which features his face and two other actors with a blue sky as the backdrop. The biography is identical to his ‘about’ tab on Facebook. His most popular tweets contain links to politically related articles. While he has a few retweets scattered about, most of the time it is his original writing. Overall, it is certain to say that George Takei is a very political man with strong beliefs. The twitter is run well and all, but could use a bit less of the serious nature.
His audience on twitter is essentially the same as well. With the fair share of love and sometimes a bit of hate, the interactions are typically direct with this famed actor. Most of the time however, it is clear as day that a lot of his followers support what he fights for, being positive as can be. He responds to both the culture and the sweet with the same strength and dexterity, to which he does not let either get too much into his head.
The instagram scene for this celebrity in particular is the weakest social media following thus far. Even myself, aware of his twitter and his Facebook, I had no idea he had something along the lines of an official Instagram. It was intriguing to scroll through it though. George Takei’s profile picture is the same as his profile photo on Facebook. His posts consist of many quotes of the inspiring kind or ones with a motivational purpose. There are a few videos scattered about with funny content, like dogs doing comical routines or memes of cats and other animals. The biography is a link to find out which local elections are in every state for this upcoming November. What his most popular posts contain is informative material. His audience is much more relaxing on instagram than anywhere else on the internet, perhaps due to is smaller number. Considering how relaxing his instagram remains and the chill content, in return the audience members are, too!
In conclusion, the most popular form of social media platform is definitely Facebook. At a whopping ten million likes (and counting!), he surpasses his other forms of media by five times his amount of followers on twitter. Facebook is more appealing after all. Unlike the limitations that follow using instagram and twitter, Facebook is free from these self imposed rules. You can post anything from links to videos to unlimited characters on text posts, whereas twitter has text post word count limits, with Instagram not allowing text posts at all. Besides Facebook’s longer history on the internet, it also serves the most amount of users than most websites. I find that the greater population of people involved in a platform are what make or break a celebrity’s ability to pursue a larger following. This is partly why George Takei is so intensely liked on Facebook.
It was a natural progression of format for the media. The live-streaming service of Twitch.tv launched in 2011 to serve as a platform for gamers to stream games from the comfort of their own homes. This platform allowed the every man to now to do something that they previously had to rely on a large organization such as MLG to do and that was to reach a large audience live allowing them to now host tournaments of their own in formats they enjoyed far more than the slow to change formats of MLG. The service also allowed the games that were more popular to gain a larger share of screen time and gave a much larger amount of content for people who only liked one particular game. The biggest game to come out of the Twitch boom was League of Legends a game built around and solely for competitive multiplayer. It was a 5v5 team game with the objective of destroying the enemy Nexus before the can destroy yours. It allowed both for team skill and individual mechanical skill to shine.
