Exclusive: Conan’s Twitter Follower Talks

Until yesterday, Sarah Killen was just a 19-year-old from Michigan tweeting under the name @LovelyButton. Now, she’s famous for being the only person Conan O’Brien is following on his brand new Twitter account. Sarah called Crushable this morning to talk about how, in addition to peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs, she also loves music, being outside, and watching Maury every day.

Tell us about yourself.
I live in Michigan. I actually live in a village, it’s not even a town, it’s a really small place. I didn’t really use the internet. I did Twitter so I could say stuff on there that nobody would see, now there’s 10,000 people looking at it.

What do you do?
I’m going to school online right now, getting my diploma. I’d really like to go to the University of Michigan. I really like psychology and neurobiology.

How did this Conan following you come about?
He actually had someone else contact me on MySpace and Facebook the day before. I got it that morning and said “Go for it.” I wasn’t really taking it seriously until I saw his tweet with my name in it, and I started getting hundreds of followers every minute.

Have you felt pressure to use your Twitter more?
I’m actually staying with my fiance’s family, and there’s a lot of women in the house, so I got Twitter to write about stuff when I got upset. Now I can’t say anything because they’re all following it!

Are you a big Conan fan?
We love him. I think he’s hilarious. I go to bed really early and I would stay up to watch him. It sucked [when his show ended]. We watched the last one.

How has your life changed since he started following you?
A couple of days ago, I didn’t know how we were going to pay for the wedding, and I didn’t have a computer that worked all the time for school and stuff. Now someone’s bought me a new computer, someone wants to pay for stuff for my wedding. Last time I looked this morning, people had donated $1500 to the 3-Day for the Cure, because I’m doing the [breast cancer awareness] walk. I put my link on there and people have donated $1500. It’s really exciting.

Do you think this wave of fame will change your life?
I hope so. I think it’ll last a couple more days and then people will get bored.

Are you going to try to extend your internet fame for as long as possible?
I’m gonna try to milk it!

How has your family reacted?
My mother won’t let my sisters on the computer! They’re not allowed near the computer for a while. My mom’s really excited. My dad didn’t believe me until he looked it up.

Have your friends said anything?
A lot of girls are getting kind of snotty.

Have a lot of people tried to contact you?
It was really weird. I found out and then I told my fiancé, he came to the house and the phone started ringing. I have 4000 messages in email — nobody’s able to get a hold of me anymore. They found that I was with [my fiancé], and they looked him up his name and got his dad’s business phone number and started blowing that number up.

Did you ever expect it to get this crazy this quickly?
I really didn’t take it seriously until I had a couple of thousand followers. I was like “This is nuts.” I thought it was going to stop there, but it’s still going today too. I thought it would be over by today.

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