TMI on Twitter?

Attention celebrities. Remember how you have complained about your lack of privacy and the media’s constant presence in your lives?

Well, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t demand to be left alone and then tell the world about the minutiae of your life and wonder why the press and paparazzi are interested. It’s time to shut up already.

I am stunned and more than a little amused by the updates stars feel compelled to Tweet to their followers. Over the past few days, Dancing With the Stars’ Lacey Schwimmer told me she had boiled chicken and steamed vegetables for lunch and that she thought the new season of So You Think You Can Dance is “blah.” Al Roker told me that Bob Costas used a Clorox wipe to remove Mr. Goodbar from his white pants at the US Open. Kirstie Alley told me she was hungry. Sherri Shepherd told me she cried during her workout with her evil trainer. Jeremy Piven asked me to hang with him at a bar in Chicago. Hairspray director Adam Shankman told me he was missing his dogs and that he wouldn’t be home in L.A. for a while (burglars take note). Ryan Seacrest told me he had a meeting with Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay Lohan sent me a topless picture of herself, told me that Justin Timberlake was cheating on Jessica Biel and then claimed that her Twitter account had been hacked. And Jane Fonda showed me a picture of her naked knee before she had surgery on it.

While Twitter has demonstrated its usefulness as an information tool during the current Iran election protests, I find the compulsion that the famous and not-so-famous have to share everything on Twitter is reminiscent of a kid standing in the middle of the playground and shouting “Look at me! Look at me!”

Self-affirmation? Yes. Self-promotion? Definitely. Self-indulgent? Absolutely.

And, like watching a car crash or I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, I am mesmerized and powerless to look away.