What’s sad and oversharing and 140 characters all over? Twitter: The greatest trainwreck chronicle of our times.
With the shocking death of 30-year-old Johnson & Johnson heiress Casey Johnson, it’s time to start picking up the pieces of what exactly went wrong.
And at what point the tweeting needs to stop. Thanks to Johnson, the world is now being exposed to a tawdrier, Twittier side of what it means to instantly communicate a downward spiral in the public’s eye.
Johnson reportedly battled drug problems for years, and her family even cut her off from its fortune in hopes she’d get clean. But she didn’t — and all the while, she just kept tweeting. Think of death by social media as the new flashing your crotch to the paparazzi. Wrong. And disturbingly raw.
Consider: In February last year, Paul Zolezzi, an aspiring model, statusupdated his suicide on Facebook. And last month, a Florida mom busied herself tweeting about birds while her toddler drowned in the family pool.
And now, we have the apex, the perfect storm of all of this hot social media macabre mess: Tila Tequila.
Everyone’s favorite bisexual attention seeker has continued her climb to notoriety through the classy live tweeting of both her grief and her confusion about whether her dead lover is actually dead.
Um, wow. Whole new level, Tila. Seriously.
At about 8:45 p.m. Monday, Tila Tequila (@officialtila) wrote: “Everyone please pray 4 my Wifey Casey Johnson. She has passed away. Thank u for all ur love and support but I will be offline to be w family”
Good move, Tila — surprising, almost. Dignified, even.
But wait! She’s not done.
Next, Tequila tweeted, “I just got news that my fiancée is not dead but currently in a coma!!! Omg . . .”
Oh, totes OMG. Goes with the “OMG you’re in a coma” sympathy card we’re planning on rolling out none too soon. Quite honestly, you get the feeling that it took everything in Tila’s power to not add an “LOL” to that update. “Not dead it’s just a coma, LOL!”
Gross.
Oh, and full disclosure: It’s OK for me to trash the Twitter. Because I use it — and I love it. I’m a total Twitter addict (@mandystadt), and I even love the hashtags (that’s when you add a #-mark in front of a topic, letting anyone who clicks on the topic follow the conversation).
But here’s the key to avoiding train-wreck town: My real stuff? The people dying or getting sick or confiding-in-me stuff? The actual lurid play-by-play details of who you’re sleeping with?
Yeah. You don’t put that up on Twitter. Unless you’re, you know. Casey. Or Tila.
“I can’t stop these haunting visions of her and I,” Tila tweets. “I love u so so much and we will Marry when I see U in Heaven my Wifey.” Casey Johnson is now offline. Rest in peace, heiress.
#If-you-can.
mstadtmiller@nypost.com