Saturday Night Live asks the Internet to help pick its hosts and musical guests, which should work out great

By Sean O'Neal | September 14, 2012 | 10:14pm

Aux Features TV

The past season of Saturday Night Live saw producers increasingly turning to the Internet to discover new, emerging musical artists like Lana Del Rey and Karmin, only to have the Internet tell them that those artists suck and the producers are stupid. "Fine, why don't you pick the guests, if you're so smart?" SNL has essentially responded, as it has now begun openly soliciting calls for future hosts and musical acts from the howling wilds of Facebook and Twitter. According to the show's Backstage Blog, unfortunate staffers will spend one day per month—and only one day per month, they plead futilely—taking suggestions using the "#SNLHost" and "#SNLMusic" hashtags, then cull through the thousands of tweets about self-promoting local bands, Justin Bieber, and their moms, looking for something viable that they can then present to their supervisors.

Right on cue, the Internet has responded by ignoring all instructions and immediately and incessantly posting suggestions on Twitter and in the blog's comments section—most of these calling for Thor actor Tom Hiddleston and Kentucky-area band Sleeper/Agent, thanks to campaigns generated by those performers' own Twitter and Facebook pages. So basically, it's already going just as organically and usefully as you'd expect any social media-based crowd-sourcing initiative to go. And hey, if you have your own pet celebrity obsession or Dadaist non-sequitur, now's the time to begin pestering NBC with it! Michael J. Pollard and a lasagna-filled tuba for #SNLHost and #SNLMusic! #MJP #LasagnaTuba