If Ashton Kutcher was my brother...

I’ve been working over the summer (and maybe for the rest of my life), for a company called kgb.  I answer text message queries ranging from: “What time is The Hangover playing in Concord, MA?” to “Why won’t he call me if he says he will?”  People can ask us anything, because they pay $.99 for each answer that we send them.

The advice questions are obviously my favorite, and the best times are when you actually get to have a bit of a conversation with a person.  The questions pop into the queue randomly, so there’s never a guarantee that you’re going to get two questions in a row from the same person.  When you do, it’s magical.

Case in point I got a question about things to do in Raleigh, NC.  I did a little searching and sent back a short list asking if the person would like more options in addition to those.  He texted back that he was 14, his girlfriend was coming into town for the day, and he didn’t have a car.  I suggested hiking, swimming, and something else. He responded with “No thanks, I’m trying to get laid, so I don’t think hiking will make that happen.”  I told him to please be safe.

There are a lot of inane questions, a lot of really good ones, and some that are quite fun.  All in all, it’s a pretty interesting gig, which occasionally gets hilarious. There is a girl who is obsessed with Ashton Kutcher.  We call her Ashton Kutcher Girl, obviously, and she has asked over 1000 questions (presumably all about him) to date.  These aren’t simple questions like “How old is he? Where does he live?”  They are usually something like “If Ashton Kutcher was my brother, and I had broken up with my boyfriend, what would he say?”  “If Ashton Kutcher was my brother and I was having a baby, would he be supportive in the delivery room?”  Some people are nice when they get these questions and say that “of course Ashton would be sympathetic and let you cry on his shoulder”, others simply don’t care and say things like “Ashton is not your brother, he doesn’t care.”  It’s all very Good Cop/Bad Cop–either way, she is undeterred.

I’m just so amazed that anyone still cares about Ashton Kutcher (especially enough to spend a lot of money asking speculative questions about him).  A dear friend of mine absolutely loathes him (which I also find odd because he doesn’t seem like someone who would inspire strong feelings in anyone), and only because of her complaining do I know that he is still in the public eye as something other than Demi Moore’s much-younger husband.  I guess I saw him trying to sell me a camera a while ago, but that just confused me too.

Is this some kind of conspiracy that I was unaware of? Does he just have the best agent in the world?  I don’t understand what kind of void Ashton Kutcher fills in peoples’ lives.  He’s good-looking, but not that good-looking, he’s mildly talented, he’s funny but mostly just arrogant and annoying like most celebrities but his attitude seems less earned–how is he special?  I heard a while ago about him trying to get more twitter followers than CNN, but again, I don’t care about twitter or Ashton Kutcher, and only mildly about CNN.

This is similar to the feelings I had when I first visited Spain and found out that the Spice Girls were still relevant–although that made me very happy, and this does not.  Maybe that’s just it, though, maybe everyone is as confused by it as I am, and that’s helping Ashton stay at the front of people’s minds.  Maybe that’s all he has; his talent is sticktoitiveness; you see him and you’re like “oh, that guy.  He’s still around?” Maybe we’ll never know.

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