Is it really all that important to have Twitter-follower bragging rights? To some it obviously is, even to the extent of paying to acquire “fake” followers, as a 1.27.18 N.Y. Times story reported.

But if you’re a big-city, brand-name film critic like Richard Roeper, who’s been a Chicago Sun Times columnist, critic and book author since the late ’80s, who cares if you have 25,000 or 250,000 followers? If I were to pay for an extra 20K followers, how would this help my game in the great scheme?

It was reported yesterday that the Chicago Sun-Times will no longer be publishing anything by Roeper until it completes an investigation of his Twitter followers. Roeper was named in that Times story about the buying and selling of fake Twitter followers.

Chicago Sun Times editor-in-chief Chris Fusco: “We became aware over the weekend of issues relating to Rich Roeper’s Twitter account. We’re investigating these issues. We will not be publishing any reviews or columns by Rich until this investigation is complete.”