Charlie Sheen joins Twitter and users brace for his messages

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You knew it had to happen, and now it has: Charlie Sheen has joined Twitter.

Although as of this writing the suddenly voluble star of ‘Two and a Half Men’ had not actually tweeted any messages, the waiting game has begun. Sheen, whose @charliesheen account is listed as ‘verified’ on the service, was quickly accepted by the Twitter community, with more than 100,000 followers and counting within hours of signing up Tuesday.

Some have speculated that Sheen intends to live-tweet Tuesday night’s airing of his interview with ABC News, which he has called ‘slanted.’

But whatever he decides to do, the bad-boy actor has received a warm welcome from the Twitterati.

The widely followed social media blog Mashable wondered what Sheen would decide to tweet. Time critic James Poniewozik wrote that, by Sheen’s joining Twitter, ‘the gauntlet is thrown’ to Kanye West, the rapper who’s become a fixture on Twitter for his outrageous, sometimes incomprehensible musings.

Novelist Walter Kirn offered a ‘Wittgensteinian investigation’ that said Sheen has become an unparalleled ‘social media binding agent.’ Although Kirn did not say so, evidence of that came Monday night when CNN’s Piers Morgan delivered his second-highest ratings ever (behind his premiere with Oprah Winfrey) with a Sheen interview that received virtually no promotion except from word-of-mouth on Twitter.

But Daniel Fienberg of Hitfix.com was a naysayer, predicting that Sheen would be retweeted ‘more obnoxiously than Conan’ O’Brien.

Are you following Sheen on Twitter?

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--Scott Collins (Twitter: @scottcollinsLAT)