Here's how Twitter turns trolls into celebrities -- and celebrities like Kanye, Trump and Martin Shkreli into trolls

"BILL COSBY INNOCENT !!!!!!!!!!"

Those three words generated 45,000 retweets, 54,000 likes and nearly 5,000 Google News search results when they were tweeted last month by Kanye West.

In the weeks leading up the rapper's latest album release, tracking his latest bursts of provocative non-sequiturs on Twitter had become almost something of a national past time. 

Each new tirade was packaged into thousands of articles and distributed far and wide across the Internet for advertising dollars. Other celebrities chastised him or retaliated and the social media marketing arms of corporate brands piggy-backed on his words with product-plug jokes.

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Even Twitter's thousands of so-called power users remarked on it to amuse their followers and maintain their personal brands.

Such is the strange, self-contained media ecosystem that Twitter has spawned around certain celebrities -- a food chain of voyeurism and attention-mongering that trades in sensationalism.

Those who understand how to exploit it can use it as a free publicity machine to promote their work, sustain what might have otherwise been 15 minutes of fame -- or even run for president.

These interactions probably wouldn't be possible in any other environment. Over the course of the last ten years, Twitter has fundamentally shifted the ways people find fame and hold on to it in a way that has shaped our culture -- for better or for worse. 

'If it bleeds it leads'

Twitter trolls are often thought of as swarms of anonymous egg-avatar profiles with small followings and vitriolic axes to grind.

But its the ones with blue checkmarks who have always defined the platform and profited from it most.

From its earliest days, Twitter has owed its celebrity users a lot. Much of the site's early mass appeal came from the feeling that it was like a living, breathing "Stars -- they're just like us" column.

Where else could you see Kanye West muse about water bottles on airplanes, Ellen DeGenerous post star-studded selfies or Seth Rogen pick a fight with a Hong Kong airline.

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Tweets like these seemed like a raw and candid window into people's lives -- free from the publicist gloss of news stories -- and gave users the excitement of feeling like they were part of a giant cultural conversation. 

"Twitter has the unique quality in that it seems unmediated," says Pamela Rutledge, a psychologist who studies the effects of media and technology. "You get the sense that certain celebrities or politicians or whomever aren't being handled."

In turn, the stars benefited from the free unfiltered exposure Twitter afforded them.

But as any news operation can attest, conflict and controversy are what really brings the eyeballs --nothing grabs headlines like Twitter beefs and collective outrage .  

"It's a little like a real-time reality show," Rutledge said. "It's the very gritty part of life. You watch these people essentially misbehaving and in some sense it makes you feel better because it's like 'Boy I thought I was crazy.'"

This type of sensationalism plays particularly well in the snarky, argumentative Twitterverse with its real-time conversations and brief posts that are often shorn of context.

More so than any other social network, it's a place where there's no such thing as bad press -- at least for a certain breed of reality show-friendly public provocateurs with a flair for the outrageous.

And that's what people have to come to expect from it.  

"Being nasty, being snide, being bitchy, being vicious, being critical -- it's all good stuff. We want as much of that as possible."

So says branding consultant Dean Crutchfield. He adds: "If it bleeds it leads — we want it."

No more media gatekeepers. Sad!

The life of a social media provocateur is, of course, not for everyone.

Most celebrities aren't looking for controversy, which can be humiliating, emotionally hurtful and detrimental to their image. Some, like Louis CK and Lena Dunham, have even cited it as a reason for leaving Twitter.

But others -- reality stars like Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump who've made a career out of chasing it, semi-famous or fading stars looking to keep their name in the press and generally outspoken people -- don't mind wading into the muck for attention.

They build unique Twitter personas that incorporate -- to varying degrees -- a foolproof formula for grabbing headlines on the platform: conflict, loud opinions and erratic behavior.

Trump's frontrunner status in the GOP has been in part credited to his prolific Twitter presence, which he wields to excoriate opponents and enemies and sometimes air seemingly stream of conscience opinions.

Some of Kardashian's most recent Internet-breaking moments came from a nude selfie she posted and the bizarre ensuing Twitter beefs with Bette Midler and Piers Morgan, neither of whom are strangers to Twitter controversy themselves.

But it's not just traditional bold-face names who wage these publicity battles. Others, like drug price gauger Martin Shrkreli, are people who might have faded from the public mind long ago if not for his willingness to pick fights on Twitter.

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In that sense, the entertainment and media industries are no longer the gatekeepers to who is allowed fame -- anyone with a modicum of name recognition can effectively run their own public relations and marketing campaign if they calibrate their Twitter persona in a way that keeps their name in the spotlight.

"Everybody can be a media company. Anyone can control the flow of information. You can interact with people you otherwise wouldn't have access to," said Paul Argenti, a professor at Dartmouth's Tuck Business School who studies corporate communications on social media. 

"There wasn't a lot of the room in national media for the things that there is now plenty of room for."

As Trump has repeatedly proven, celebrities no longer need to court the media as they did in the past and media-driven scandals no longer have the impact they used to in a world inundated with contrived controversy.

A blessing and a curse

Twitter depends on big moments like Kanye's rants and Trump's insults to drive popular interest to the social network -- it's part of the reason it launched the "Moments" feature recently.

But it can also make Twitter feel like a hostile and alienating place for new users. Twitter's reputation for conflict and the dominance of a small group of power users are often cited as reasons that its user growth has stagnated.

People like listening on Twitter conversations but, for everyday users, it's hard to reach a wide audience.

If Twitter wants to have a future, it will need to grapple with how to make the site about more than just the big -- and very loud -- names.

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