• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, April 29, 2011

By the time this goes to press, Charlie Sheen could be dead, incarcerated, or - heck - back on TV. But at the time of writing, he was just getting the first reviews for his touring one-man show, "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option." Everyone seems to agree that it is horrendously bad: not funny, because he's not a stand-up comedian; not interesting, since all he does is rant; and not revelatory, as he's still at pains to present a cool, "winning" image (on stage at least).

The only thing I find really surprising about this is the fact that anyone was surprised: While a person in the midst of a drug-fueled meltdown may throw off some brilliant one-liners, on longer exposure they tend to be boring, scary or both. But there are also a couple of lessons here for online marketing - especially any campaign employing social media. First of all, don't mistake online "followers" for uncritical supporters. Second, don't use controversy just to get attention. And third, if your advertising is better than your product, be prepared for a backlash.

Considered as a product, Sheen has certainly showed some marketing savvy. Of course this whole thing is pig heaven for the media: Celebrity gossip shows have to love any star who takes his differences with his employer to the air (sort of like Conan O'Brien, except without class, humor or a legitimate grievance). After whipping up a media frenzy, Sheen then set a record for the least time required to accumulate over a million followers on Twitter - 25 hours and 17 minutes, to be precise. Indeed his online presence has become a story unto itself, including a high-profile search for an intern to handle his social media operations.

But that last detail also tells you how hollow the whole spectacle really is. If the most interesting part of a social media campaign is the fact that it uses social media, it has already failed because the medium should never eclipse the product. In the same vein, accumulating a lot of followers doesn't equal real popularity: I would guess that more than half of Sheen's (now three million) Twitter followers are neutral spectators at best, rubberneckers at worst - mostly just hanging around to witness his inevitable implosion, whenever it comes.

Then, of course, if you do achieve online popularity, there's always the chance you will over-deliver in the sense of creating unrealistic expectations. Twitter is great for Sheen, at least during this stage of his flameout: After all, he only has to tweet if and when he has something funny or controversial to say, and the short, telegram-like quality of the medium is perfect for concise, inflammatory outbursts that don't necessarily string together in any coherent way. A lot of it just refers to established motifs (e.g. "winning," "warlock," "tiger blood" and so on).

But there is a huge chasm between Twitter and a one-hour, one-man show - even if Sheen is too addled to admit it, leading to a disjointed, rambling and utterly uninteresting non-event. After building him up, it was perhaps inevitable that social media would turn on Sheen when he failed. A number of people live-tweeted the disastrous debut of his "Torpedo of Truth" show at Detroit's Fox Theatre: You could literally see the goodwill draining away before your very eyes. A critic for Crain's Detroit Business observed that the "freaks, fun hogs, ne'er do-wells turned on him in droves," comparing the show to "Custer's annihilation or the sinking of the Titanic."