[symple_heading style=”” title=”By Ken Stone” type=”h1″ font_size=”” text_align=”left” margin_top=”20″ margin_bottom=”20″ color=”undefined” icon_left=”” icon_right=””]
Nearly 40,000 retweets later, Katie LeBarron of Green Bay, Wisconsin, was still in shock how a throwaway line to “Star Wars” legend Mark Hamill could travel so far so fast.
LeBarron, a 31-year-old medical records worker, suggested Thursday: “I think that @HamillHimself could tweet ‘bippity boppity boo’ and get retweeted thousands of times.” Then to her amazement, he did.
Late Thursday, she told MyNewsLA.com she had forgotten the incantation (technically spelled “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”) was from “Cinderella” until someone tweeted about it.
“It was the first thing that came to mind,” LeBarron said.
‘bippity boppity boo’
#TwitterTest https://t.co/4ggc2ODeSI— @HamillHimself (@HamillHimself) January 4, 2018
A big-time “Star Wars” fan, LeBarron says she’s seen that Hamill was always really friendly with the fans (and 2.38 million followers), “so I thought at least he’d get a laugh if he happened to see it.”
And despite being the kind of person who debates tweeting to celebrities “because I don’t want to bother them,” she tweeted to @HamillHimself and went on with her day.
Then: “All of a sudden my phone just started buzzing like crazy, which never happens. I unlocked it and saw the Twitter alerts” of her tweet being retweeted by Hamill and others.
Twenty-four hours later, Hamill’s #TwitterTest had 39,000 retweets and 54,000 likes.
“In 4 minutes, I think it’s safe to say that you won the Internet today,” one commenter said early on.
How are friends and family reacting to her social-media fame?
“Mostly they think it’s funny,” she said via email. “It’s the kind of joke I tend to make, but this doesn’t usually happen in response.”
It’s not her first brush with celebrity, though.
“Funny enough, I once tweeted a friend that Aaron Stanford [Pyro in “X-Men”] should play Skywalker because I had a picture where he looked like a Luke Skywalker,” she said. “Stanford tweeted back he’d rather be Boba Fett.”
Later, she watched the TV show “Nikita” and saw a scene where Stanford was playing with a Boba Fett figure.
“That always makes me laugh,” said LeBarron, who has no connection to the Southland except “it’s on my bucket list to travel there one day. My father-in-law is originally from Long Beach too.”
LeBarron says she like to read, write, listen to and play music (“Fall Out Boy/Blink 182/Beatles”), spend time with her two little girls, and watch things like “Star Wars,” “Criminal Minds” and “Friends.”
My Twitter hasn’t seen so much action in its’ whole existence up to now. I may have underestimated my joke a touch…
— Katie LeBarron (@garbygal) January 4, 2018
I think I started something…much bigger than I expected (considering I expected to be overlooked) #sorrytwitter
— Katie LeBarron (@garbygal) January 4, 2018
If she could speak to Hamill in person, what would she tell him?
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “I once said to my friend that I’m not sure I would ever be able to ask a celebrity for an autograph, I am that shy — and I would probably just freeze up.
“If I could manage it, I would say ‘thank you’ because I do think it was really nice that he tweeted in response to what I had said.”