When Twitter Strikes Back

On Thursday 10^th September social networking Web site Twitter played host to a war of words as a publicity stunt by fans of television show Supernatural inadvertently caused an outbreak of religious uproar, specifically from musician and actor Sean Combs aka P Diddy and his approximately two million followers.

In direct response to the rising popularity of the trending topic #luciferisrising Combs directed his followers to continuously respond with the opposing topic #godishere. Whilst both topics did indeed reach the top ten during the day, Supernatural fans were victorious in raising awareness of their favourite show, with their chosen tag reaching number one on the list before Twitter acted, removing both tags and adjusting their software to cease registering any further instances of publication. Fortunately for the fans they had a back-up plan, changing their use of tag and continuing in their efforts to dominate the trends. Actor Chad Lindberg - who guest-starred on Supernatural during the shows second season - even took part himself (@ChadLindberg), urging his followers to continue the mass publicity whilst actress Traci Dinwiddle - herself a Season 3 guest-star - sent the following message to fans after the premiere party: "Kripke and all were blown away by the SPN fandom's "tweeter take-over"! It was the buzz of the evening! Well done, #Supernatural! Xoxo" (7:37 AM Sep 11th GMT via @GrooveGoddess)

The fans celebrated their success despite setbacks and were delighted at the reaction from those they were supporting, whether of past or present involvement with the show.

But it is the involvement of the most recent addition to the main cast that should be the most notable. Misha Collins, who portrays the angel Castiel and is currently filming season 5 in Vancouver, has gained a considerable amount of support amongst said fandom even to the degree that his followers not only call themselves 'Misha's Minions' but even have a website dedicated to the promotion of their activities as a global force. It is worth noting at this point that the so-called Minions have their own mention in Wikipedia as a definition of the word despite this specific fan grouping only being four months old - an indication in itself of the speed of growth and the publicity the group has garnered. As practical jokes go, this is a particularly fast-growing and effective one, with the Minions modelling themselves after armed forces in creating country or area specific cells within the 'army' - including the BMR or British Minion Resistance and MAD or Misha's American Defence, among others - whilst organising recruitment videos, haggling over land rights and even determining how much papal wheat they should be paying in tithe to the 'Overlord' as Collins is known. You would be forgiven for being concerned at this behaviour but, as one of these Minions (albeit only at the periphery) I can assure all readers that the situation is merely a rather large and well-supported joke begun with an off-the-cuff remark by Misha Collins on his Twitter account (@mishacollins) and being continually perpetrated by fans with a not inconsiderable amount of humour and loyalty.

That loyalty was put to the test this week after Collins commented on the actions of Sean Combs against the fan-based publicity stunt, challenging Combs in a tongue-in-cheek manner: "I'm throwin' down the gauntlet: P. Diddy, if you're out there & you're man enough, I challenge you to an cupcake eating contest-on horseback!" (12:46 AM Sep 11th GMT)

This was followed by: "Minions: I'm not sure how these things work, but if we get #PDIDDYISSCAREDOFHISTV to be a twit trend, that'd be our first tactical victory." (12:51 AM Sep 11th GMT)

Within hours Supernatural fans were planning their next publicity stunt, intending to use the tag suggested by Collins throughout the day leading up to the second episode being aired. One young woman even created a video providing instruction as to when the stunt was to begin and how to correctly use hash tags in order to maximise publication, the link quickly spreading through the network of fans via Tweets. With four days to go, it emerged that someone had designed t-shirts in response to both the previous week's event and the coming one - one shirt design had #luciferiscoming across the chest whilst the other declared #PDiddyIsScaredOfHisTv accompanied by an image of the actor's face. With a week to prepare it seemed that once again Supernatural would be dominating Twitter and fans would be gaining some retribution for the uninformed attack upon their efforts the week before. However once again the concerted and well-planned attempt was thwarted.

Due to begin at 9am for Vancouver where the show is filmed - with fans across the world eagerly awaiting their own local time equivalent - the anticipated stunt had not even an hour of life before Twitter once again took action and censored #PDiddyIsAfraidOfHisTV, preventing it from appearing within the list of trending topics within every users profile page. It was a bold move by the social networking site considering that far worse things have reached the trending topic list previously and currently there are many opinions being expressed via the 140 character limit per Tweet especially regarding the recent actions of Kanye West (when he invaded the stage at the MTV awards to state his opinion that the winner of Best Video should have been singer Beyonce Knowles rather than Taylor Swift) with many of those opinions being negative or downright insulting. Worse still are the opinions and attempts at humour being publicised regarding Patrick Swayze's life and career after the actor passed away earlier in the week from pancreatic cancer - one comment being distributed was "Kanye West just interrupted Patrick Swayze's funeral just to say Michael Jackson's was better..."

I'm sure I am not the only person to read that and not really find much of humour in it.

Upon discovering the act of censorship there was uproar within the ranks of Supernatural fans, calls for boycotting Twitter amongst the retaliatory comments that declared Twitter was suppressing freedom of speech as well as the more jeering tone imbedded within the phrase "Twitter is afraid of Misha's Minions" - this too was censored within an hour although, by using another website TweetCloud, both tags could be seen as high profile trends. Collins, evidently in waiting to see if the fan-base would indeed follow through on their plan, was amongst those condemning Twitter for its actions - "#Twitterisafraidofmishasminionsis blocked now too??!! What is this? The Stalingrad of the Internet?" - although he did also spare a chiding remark to his followers, telling them that "It seems that every time we mobilize on the interweb, something breaks. You're like 22 thousand bulls in a china shop." (This is a reference to previous attempts by his followers to raise his profile through voting within a competition - on two occasions the servers for the website crashed and Collins jokingly suggested that it was through the over-eager actions of his followers. None of them attempted to deny it although several, with good humour, pretended to take the blame.)

Whilst it is possible that perhaps the fans choice of wording could be seen as bordering on childish, the simple jest toward Sean Combs in response to his actions was certainly not intended as an insult or an attempt to begin a war between the Supernatural fandom and his followers - that much is evident from the general tone whilst the event was being planned. However, whilst Twitter may be technically correct in preventing an incident before it could happen, such censorship certainly leaves a lasting, negative, impression which will not be forgotten anytime soon.

Abandoning all other possibilities and despite their thwarted prank the topic #supernatural was once again taken up as the rallying cry by fans and, as this article was being submitted, it was wavering between second and third in the top ten. It is entirely possible that the fans managed to make it number one for the second week in a row and may even continue for weeks to come, making their favoured television show the number one talked about topic on Twitter.

The events of the past week, although in turn amusing and concerning, once more prove something that has been said before by both those who follow television shows and those who help create them: The voice of the fans should never be underestimated. Joss Whedon discovered that when Firefly was cancelled before the show had barely begun, fan support paving the way for the movie Serenity in order to complete the fledgling story. The crew behind Stargate: Atlantis discovered it when fans reacted badly to a character death resulting in the return of the character a year later. This writer humbly suggests that neither Twitter nor the rest of the world of fandom have yet to see the full power behind the Supernatural voice - it's one that definitely shouldn't be underestimated. And, I am sure, we haven't heard the last of it.