Dear Mr. Schmuh Schpattinson,

Wow. Your letter covers a really huge topic here, so bear with me if I get a little windy in my reply. And by that, I don’t mean gassy. I mean long-winded, but I know that you get me. After all, I’ve seen like all your work, even that truly terrible Revenge of the Nerfherders, or whatever that thing is with the truly terrible wig and even worse dubbing.

See, now I know you are laughing, and I know this because I’m smart enough to understand that you are a human being, while what I see in interviews and press conferences and adorkably nerdy award show appearances is a public persona. They are two different things.

Since not everyone is following along here, let me explain. My public persona is a balls-out, cunty, sanctimonious biznatch. My private persona is a balls-out, cunty, sanctimonious biznatch who does human things like take a dump and cry for three months when her husband leaves her. See how that works? The public doesn’t get to see everything. In other words, you know my online persona, but you sure as hell don’t know me. Same goes for the celebrities you think you know by watching everything they appear in and stalking gossip blogs.

Now that we have that little portion of my response covered, we’ll go onto the next. NOTHING, my children, NOTHING ONLINE IS PRIVATE. No matter how secretly you think you have things locked down or anonymized or anything else, it can (and invariably will) be found, and often by the people you would most die of embarrassment to have them know about it. Let’s take Mr. Scmuh Schpattinson here. Odds are, he doesn’t have a Twitter account. But I’ll bet dollars to donuts he knows how to run a mean Google search and possibly even has a vanity search set up. Guess what often shows up in there? You guessed it… your Twitter conversations.

Now, lets assume he has a girlfriend you don’t really care for, but he’s madly in love with. If you trash her on a regular basis in Twitter, do you think that endears you to him? Do you think that when the inevitable (in your fantasy world) break-up occurs, he’s going to remember you and come running back because you were smart enough to see through it? No. Odds are he’ll see you as a creepy fanatic who bashes the woman he loves. Period.

Now, here’s where we all have to get our little feet planted on terra firma. In a fantasy world, there’s a certain young Hollywood actor I would fucking LOVE to have service me on the regular, take my kids for Happy Meals, and mow my damn lawn. In reality, I’m aware that I’m a woman of a certain age who hates men, will never marry again, and writes a tongue-in-cheek column for a fandom blog. The two do not mesh. BECAUSE I am a woman of a certain age who hates men, will never marry again, writes a tongue-in-cheek column for a fandom blog, and rarely leaves my city of residence, I have a certain amount of anonymity. In other words, Mr. Schmuh Schpattinson’s real-life counterpart will never in a million fucking years know I exist unless something I Tweeted or blogged pops up in the aforementioned vanity search.

Now, that being said, I still realize that this fantasy person in my head that I like to watch on TV and the like is an actual person. While I may point out that I find his girlfriend’s acting skills lacking, or that she gives off the public vibe that she hates every single fan, I don’t claim to know anything about their relationship personally. I don’t give a rat’s ass about whatever private relationship they have behind the public business, because if you made a Venn diagram of their lives, there would be exactly zero intersection with mine.

Okay, part three. See again, in my reality, I will never meet this person, I feel fairly anonymous as a result, and I don’t tend to talk about anything but the public personae.

However, there is a segment of the fandom we can call “totally fucking delusional” for want of a more tactful term. These fans think that they will meet a celebrity (any celebrity) and kismet will take over, leaving them in the relationship of their dreams. One person’s (mine) delusion is another person’s demented reality, but whatev. If that’s what you really think will happen, by all means, carry on and ignore the hell out of me. HOWEVER, if you truly think this person will meet you one day and fall madly in love with you, why in the ever-loving hell would you Tweet and post shit as if they wouldn’t?

Think about it, people. You have to pick one reality or the other. If you really think some musician or actor is your destiny, then odds are you should keep your public profile one of nothing more than devotion and admiration. Bashing friends/music/current fuckbuddies, etc. makes no sense. If, however, you are rooted in reality and know that you’ll never meet this person, carry on with your Twitter diatribes. However, why the hell would you care who they are schtupping?