The Twittering relationship of Demi and Ashton

For anyone following celebrities on Twitter, the micro-blogging site that has more momentum than Obama and the sagging economy combined, the two to follow – if you want to be voyeuristic and sort of turned off – are Demi Moore, 46, and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, 31. (Their Twitter addresses are @aplusk for Ashton and @mrskutcher for Demi.)

On the weekend of March 21st, they were in Parrot Cay, the Caribbean retreat owned by Demi’s ex, Bruce Willis, in the Turks and Caicos. Invited to his wedding to British model, Emma Hemming, Demi and Ashton were preparing for the event. Ashton posted a picture of his wife’s butt as she was leaning over in her white bikini on his Twitter page. “Watching my wife steam my suit while wearing a bikini. I love God!” he tweeted. And with the picture, he wrote, “Shh, don’t tell wifey.” Demi, on her Twitter page, then wrote, “He is such a sneak and while I was steaming his suit, too.”

The two lovebirds are addicted to Twitter, it seems. It’s not hard to see why Hollywood types like the free social-networking site, on which you write updates of 140 characters or less for your “followers” to read. It’s a way to develop the fan base and feed their own celebrity – on their terms.

But Demi and Ashton are somehow a study in icky relationship co-dependence. Why do they feel the need to make their intimate love (if that’s what they really have) public for all to see? Last week, after they went separate ways following the wedding – he to a film set and she to home, where she found that her dogs “snubbed” her because she had been away  – they continued posting their thoughts about each other. “Baby, I love you so much. I miss you,” he tweeted.

And then he had an idea. Why not enlist all of his almost half-million followers to send a “love wave” to Demi, by simultaneously sending a message to her site. “Help me make wifeys day,” he suggested. Another tweet: “8 min just a little ‘good morning we love you’ or ‘missed you while you were sleeping’ will be perfect.” So the followers – those who were online, paying attention to his instructions – did as he asked. “5 min prepare your tweets for the love wave!!!” came the countdown. And then, as she was receiving them, in one big wave on her Twitter page, he phoned her, to see how she reacted. “She’s on fire,” he reported.

A few days later, when they had reunited, he tweeted, “And my heart sings again.back with my better 3/4.”

Is it just me or does this seem a bit creepy? I mean, if my husband loved me so much, I wouldn’t be broadcasting it all over the place. Then again, I am not a Hollywood celebrity and do not suffer from extreme ego or self-absorption. They are reducing the power of their love by trivializing it, updating followers with it as if it were a diet or a house renovation. They are using it to make us interested in them, because otherwise, are we? It’s not as if she is Nicole Kidman and he is Brad Pitt. Their stars are fading or were dim to begin with.

Being a voyeur, even one controlled by the person we are spying on, is sort of cool, I grant you that. We live in a confessional, shameless age, when everyone and anyone is blogging about their most intimate thoughts and activities.

But there’s something about Ashton and Demi that doesn’t seem authentic. It feels as though they are so addicted to fame, they will do anything. (Don’t forget – she made headlines when she posed on the cover of Vanity Fair, nude while fully pregnant, back in the nineties.) And some even said that their marriage was a publicity stunt.

Still, even if their Twittering is a bid for more fame and attention, it is interesting just to follow for that reason, if nothing else. You slow down to look – or in this case, to read -  just as you might when you see a car crash.

After all, we all suffer from morbid curiosity.