Friday 7 September 2012

Oh, the twitter bad men

I read this and it made me think.

Basically it's a polemic against cowardly comedians who use their fans to troll and bash people they don't like on twitter. Well, I'm shocked.

My older readers will recall I had a similar run-in with similarly lunatic fanboys, so I have personal experience of this.

And look, it's not nice. I came within a hair's breadth of shutting down my blog, but I didn't.

I think the fact that these three "big name" arseholes have, so blatantly, used their tribes of followers to troll is pretty damning to them, but more damning to the people who, like zombie sheep, troll off to do the bidding of their heroes.

But for all that, I have a major, major, bone to pick with the author:

Twitter was a vital support network for her.

Er, no.

Twitter is not a vital support network for anyone. Twitter is an open platform for people to say things on and it's quite clearly a place where unpleasant and unkind things are often said. Choosing to use twitter as a support network means that you are also going to open yourself up to things that are not supportive and the consequences thereof.

Yes, it's ludicrous of Twitter to suspend the victim, but that's not the point. If you want to use a platform where this kind of thing can happen, you have to accept that it could all go wrong.

It's free. It's flaky. It's fucked up. If you can't deal with it, don't use it.

3 comments:

JuliaM said...

"I think the fact that these three "big name" arseholes have, so blatantly, used their tribes of followers to troll ..."

How have they? Is there any evidence they have any more control over what their followers do than I do?

Twitter followers aren't your own little army of flying monkeys you can send off on missions!

You are, however, quite right about using Twitter as a crutch.

Duncan @ Trabasack said...

If you read the post Obo links to, you will see that they are an army of flying monkeys.

You may not have any influence, but those twats do.

JuliaM said...

Yes, obviously I did read it. I went better than that, I commented there.

And my comment still stands - 'he asked me to/suggested I do it!' wouldn't hold up in court, so why should it make a difference in Twitter?