Embarrassed Taye Diggs Explains Why He Followed Everyone on Twitter
[There was a video here]
Back in April, The Best Man and The Best Man Holiday star Taye Diggs began following new people on Twitter. Many new people. He followed so many people so quickly—thousands and thousands per day—that it started to feel less like a follow and more like a deranged chase. He followed a volunteer fire department. He followed a youth soccer camp. He followed the maker of a wine ice cream.
Today, Taye Diggs follows roughly 45,500 people. That means in your small town of 35,000, there are five people who have Taye Diggs' ear.
No one knew why Taye Diggs followed so many people. His tweets were mostly vines of himself, interspersed with thoughts about basketball. He never engaged with anyone on Twitter. Occasionally, and perhaps accidentally, he replied to himself.
Wow!!!
— Taye Diggs (@TayeDiggs) May 4, 2014
Friday on Today, Dark Prince of Morning Matt Lauer finally made Diggs explain why he had suddenly begun hunting Twitter users like Pokémon.
Taye's answer: A social media expert told him to. (Full video here.)
[There was a video here]
"Literally—I mean I'm embarrassed. Everyone was telling me I needed to have more of a presence on Twitter. So I met with this dude who deals in social network [sic] and he said 'Instead of focusing on always disseminating information, why don't you focus on using it as a ticker?' So [I] gave him a bunch of people that I was interested in, from athletes to people in politics, just a whole bunch of people. And then he started following people for me.
Bizarrely, despite his admission of embarrassment, Diggs seems determined to convince everyone that he LOVES following 45,500 people on Twitter, and totally did it on purpose.
"Now whenever I want," he told Lauer, "I can just look at my phone and just hear what's going on with all these people."
After pointing out that Diggs follows all the "Today" anchors ("Did you even know that?" asked Matt; "Of course!" said Taye, perhaps playing the odds that, in any given room, there are bound to be at least a few people there followed by Taye Diggs), Lauer asked if he could recall the last tweet he read by Natalie Morales. Diggs ignored the question, and instead informed the room he had once ridden next to Carson Daly on an airplane. Then he opined about the importance of keeping life interesting.
It just, honestly—it keeps it more interesting to me....I'm just trying to keep myself simulated.
He probably meant stimulated.
