Do any ‘big’ celebrities/musicians participate online, on messageboards(their own or others), or answer fan emails, or (very doubtful but I’ll ask) have public IM SNs?
Wil Wheaton has a web log.
Nathan Fillion (Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly) posts to some of the Firefly fansites, including information on the upcoming Firefly movie.
Sir Ian MacKellan posted a fair amount of stuff to LOTR fansites during the early days of the shooting.
I would have to say almost certainly they do. Now, publicly, probably not. But I would venture to say there are a great deal of them online at various places, you just don’t know who they are.
You just know Jon Stewart is a geek somewhere in our midst (and hell, if he were a Doper, it wouldn’t surprise me).
I can think offhand of two celebrities who have/had public AOL email addresses, so their AIM names are “public.” (Michael Moore and Aurora Snow).
Several of the View Askew (Kevin Smith & friends) folks post to the View Askew boards, including Kev.
Jim Beaver, who plays Ellsworth on HBO’s Deadwood, participates in the DeadwoodHBO group list on Yahoo.
“Sometimes I wish we could just hit 'em over the head, rob 'em, and throw their bodies in the creek."
"But that would be wrong. ”
—-Swearengen & Tolliver
Geddy Lee of Rush posted fairly frequently on his own board when his solo album was out. Now, not so much.
I know, I was talking about out in the open.
Troy McClure: During one of the Daily Show episodes, Stewart said a catchphrase popular on a forum I go to, leading to much speculation as to if he was indeed a ‘goon’(what the member refer to themselves as).
What was MM’s AOL name?
Courtney Love posts as Courtney on her own message board at kittyradio. She also has posted as Courtney on suicide girls. Her posts don’t make a damn bit of sense. They are misspelled word salad.
Poppy Z. Brite has a very popular livejournal, and Les Claypool used to do an “Ask Les” column on his website. I don’t know if they can be considered “big” celebrities or cult figures.
Lots of pop stars have lame-o tour journals on their sites. Avril Levigne does. Her entries are vapid enough that I can believe she really wrote them.
I don’t know that you’d call him a “big” celebrity, but Robert Hunter, principal lyricist for the Grateful Dead (as well as being a performer in his own right), kept a WEB log going and would answer emails directly. He and I had a bit of a conversation about the pressures associated with being in such a successful band not long after Garcia’s death. He was a very thoughtful, pleasant guy, just as I would imagine him to be IRL.
I read Fred Durst’s Xanga blog one time. It was “deep.”
Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club participate on a Talking Heads message board and even went in the chat room sometimes.
Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian keeps a diary on the Belle and Sebastian website. He and some other band members also answer questions from fans in the Q&A’s portion of the website.
I think it was MMFlint.
If we’re counting web logs, I know Tom Hamilton (bassist of Aerosmith) and the members of No Doubt post things to their respective websites once in a while. Not much interaction, though.
Neil Gaiman has a blog somewhere out there.
Most of the Baen stable of authors hang out at their Baen’s Bar groups, and Lois McMaster Bujold has her own email list and hangs out on it. I know a bunch of us on the Bujold list hang out together in real life, and at Baltcon this year she hung out with us in the hotel and we went out to eat several times. [as an example. Don’t know if you consider a multiHugo winner and fairly well selling author a celebrity or not=)]
I know that several people from Babylon5 hung out on one of the mIRC channels a friend of mine was on [she is a serious bab5 fanatic]
Many reality show contestants participate in online messageboards. Last year, much of the cast of Joe Schmo hung out at various messageboards, and the producer, writer, and host are all back this year to discuss Joe Schmo 2. I believe various Amazing Race participants have also been online.
Aaron Sorkin and Rob Lowe of The West Wing both posted at Television without Pity in the past, although Aaron ended up getting in trouble for it and even wrote an episode about his experiences online.
A lot of soap stars also participate on their message boards. I know that Amber Tamblyn was active online back in her soap days, I’m not sure if she still is now that she’s on Joan of Arcadia.
Josh Groban has posted on his message board a few times. (If I were him, I’d be too afraid of the fangirls to even read the posts there.)
Cherie Blair’s Ebay ID recently was made public, which featured heavily in all the trashy UK newspapers.
Ask and you shall receive:
Several other comic book pros are regulars on message boards. Mark Millar’s forum, Millarworld, plays host to several writers and artists, including Warren Ellis, Ed Brubaker, Joe Casey, Kurt Busiek, Tony Harris, Bryan Hitch, Rob Liefeld, and J. Scott Campbell, as well as Millar himself:
http://www.millarworld.biz/index.php?act=idx
Writer Geoff Johns’ message boards:
http://www.geoffjohns.com/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?http://www.geoffjohns.com/
Artist Mike Allred’s message board:
http://www.comicscommunity.com/boards/allred/
Carly Simon has a website in which (among other things) she answers questions E-Mailed to her. She probably answers about 3 per month but considering she is probably very busy, it’s good to see a celebrity taking an active part on the Internet.
The URL is so obvious I forgot to post it:
In the wacky coincidence department, the Onion has an article today on celebrity weblogs. In their list is Billy Corgan, Gillian Anderson, Al Roker, Melanie Griffith and a few more.
Also, my local TV weatherman has a blog at geofffox.com