This was possible before Twitter. I remember back in the phpBB days, I was in a group where people were discussing the work of the philosopher Daniel Dennett and I had just read his book and didn't think people were reading him correctly. Instead of immediately taking to the "submit" button to tell them what I thought, I just emailed Daniel Dennett and asked him. He was head of the Tufts University Cognitive Science center and his email was publicly listed. He answered pretty quickly.

I wonder if he still would or if the amount of spam hitting public figures from every direction is so overwhelming that they can't possibly respond to it all. And I wonder how much of the "responses" you get from blue checks on Twitter is really them and how much is a hired social media manager running their account.