It was a warm day in July. I was perusing Twitter and reading Entertainment Weekly, when all of a sudden I was struck with a profound thought: what if I tried to get Annie Barrett, my favorite columnist for Entertainment Weekly, to follow me on Twitter? I immediately set to tweeting about her.

Six hours and two tweets later, I was at last being followed by a blue checkmark-verified Twitter account.

For those of you who do not know, a blue checkmark verifies that a user is proven to be the legitimate author of a person’s tweets. The honor is typically reserved for celebrities who want to prevent random people from claiming their identities.

I know other people with a blue-checkmark follower. My friend Zoe Ursick, a friend and freshman at the University of Missouri, is fortunate enough to be followed by Snoop Dogg. Though she does not know exactly how she got a follow from him, she assumes it is because she constantly retweeted his tweets and liked his posts on Instagram.

“Sure enough he did follow me,” Ursick said. “It was completely random though. And let me say that this was before he became Snoop Lion, so I am being followed by the timeless, the original, Snoop Dogg. It’s like getting a follow from Nicholas Coppola before he was Nicolas Cage … not that anyone would actually want that.”

In addition, Britney Spears and Aaron Carter are following two acquaintances of mine. Too bad that would have been way more relevant in the early 2000s. I guess you take what you can get.

But beyond these random Twitter victories, it is normally quite difficult to achieve such a feat. A freshman at Marquette who asked to be kept anonymous tried and failed to get a follow by Justin Bieber.

When his movie “Never Say Never” was released in February 2011, she fervently tried to get him to follow her by constantly tweeting at him. Such tweets included “Please follow me, I love you @justinbieber,” and “@justinbieber I’ll tweet you everyday until you follow me.”

Her most extreme tweet, “Your dreams came true by working hard. You could make my dreams come true by following me @justinbieber” was left unanswered. Alas, her dreams were crushed, but she begrudgingly moved on.

For those of you readers who want your favorite superstar to follow you, here are a few simple tips.

1) You can cyber-annoy them until they ultimately follow you. That is what I did to Annie Barrett, and though it only took two tweets to crack her, the pestering did the trick. Obviously, do not take it too far and go borderline stalker.

2) You can just tweet a lot about said celebrity. You don’t necessarily have to tag them in each tweet; just mention the person, and soon enough, they might take note and follow a loyal fan.

3) Do as Ms. Ursick did, and retweet/favorite multiple tweets. They may acknowledge you as a die-hard Twitter follower and reward you with a follow.

The gift of getting followed by a blue checkmark-verified celebrity on Twitter can be one of life’s greatest pleasures. I highly suggest you get to groveling for that follow, and join us: the few, the proud, the blue checkmark approved.