Celebrities who've never so much as jostled bottoms past each other on the red carpet have an opinion on each others extra-marital activities, on their clothing, on their partners of choice.
But generally it's left there.
On hearing culinary goddess Nigella Lawson being called a 'tubby old trout', however, I had to draw the line. I did what I know, as an online editor, one must never, ever do - feed the troll.
A few back and forth’ings with a tweeter using a pseudonym and fake avatar I realised what I already knew. It wasn't worth it.
Posting as a fictional 78 year old grouchy man the tweeter was indeed just in existence to stir trouble and bitch at other users.
All my tweets served to do was lather them in more fame than even their retweet by Nigella herself had done (and Nigella said she was taking 'immense pleasure' from his insult).
The torrent of reply to this twitter troll, however, is testament to how far the online community has come.
No longer do we, as visitors to an online public space, turn and blush when someone is getting an unprovoked lashing from someone not even courageous enough to post as himself.
Oh no.
We use 160 characters to shout them down. Power to the people. Twitter troll himself admitted 'Well my dear, you certainly stirred a bees nest up with your RT.' And for that alone, I think I'm grateful I did it.
I wonder how much time someone must have on their hands to be bothered with such a pass-time, but who am I to judge?
I think we all just ended up feeling a bit sorry for the person who took on Nigella on twitter. And lost.
3 comments:
Well written - spoken for the people!
5 months since last posting Jo!! :) Welcome back :p
Fighting fire with social media fire! Waahoo!
And thanks James - was actually working on a crafty blog which I've migrated into this one for reasons relating to keeping sane! There was a Christmas break though! :)
Post a Comment