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Tom Daley hit the headlines yesterday over the arrest of a teenager, who sent him some pretty horrific abuse. It seems Twitter’s got a bit of a problem on its hands, as it wasn’t just Daley getting the hate, loads of Team GB have been targeted.
Notably, 18-year-old female weightlifter, Zoe Smith, got the small-minded chauvinistic attacks you’d expect, but she just shrugged it off and went on to lift a new British record. Likewise, Rebecca Adlington got hate, and not just from good ol’Frankie Boyle either.
If you have a quick scan of tweets sent to Team GB people, you’ll see the vast majority of them are positive and supportive, as you might expect. But there is a hard line of super-dicks sending real hate to the athletes. The problem is that it’s actually driving celebrities and public personalities, like sports people, off Twitter. As the Guardian points out, people like Louis Smith have actually ditched Twitter over the Olympics because of the abuse — imagine if other celebrities that actually tweet themselves did that.
What’s wrong with people that they must abuse others? I thought we were growing up from our internet trolling days (or at least putting them to good use), but it seems Twitter is the troll’s new home. It’s such a shame; the arseholes are starting to ruin it for the rest of us. [Guardian]
Image credit: Troll from Shutterstock
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This is a big problem for twitter as following celebrity tweets is what gets a lot of people onto the service. If celebs don’t feel that they can’t tweet without getting abused by these morons then they will go elsewhere (I recomend Google+), but if twitter starts clamping down on what some users consider “free speech” then they will lose users that way.
Have you read some of the comments when Robert Scoble goes off on one of his Anti-Microsoft rants? Not quite YouTube league but still..
I never said that Google+ was free of abusive comments. I just said I recommended Google+.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 sums it up nicely.
The best remedy for this is to ignore any abuse on a personal level and delete it, i doubt half of the trolls actually mean what they say so responding to it fuels more hatred, whereas if we ignored it as a culture they would find other things to do.
Plus, It’s twitter. You don’t have to read other peoples tweets and you can block people. You are choosing to read that tweet and take it to heart. English people need to grow thicker skin.
nice generalisation, thanks for that!! ಠ_ಠ
You do realize that you have subtly proved my point. Generalizations are generally true. (suck on my American spelling)
Groan, you have your own site jog along please.
With that logic..You have your own d!ck, go eat it
I’m not American but English my little pommie friend.
Ah so you are instead a facetious troll, I’m not feeding you so adios amigo!
Ahh… the troll response. Very original.
generalisations are on the whole bollocks in my experience! (and im not generalising there) For example i used to think all Americans were a little bit dim and cheesy, then i got to know some and realised that generalisation was very incorrect and their society has the same amount of layers as ours, i have realised this about many generalised opinions i’ve had over the years merely by educating myself a little and opening my mind, maybe you should do so also
now im sick of typing the word generalisation so im leaving it at that
p.s. i dont give a shite about your spelling because without auto correct i suck at it)
Peace out
i honestly dont get twitter myself, i tried it and found it pointless, im sure many people enjoy using it and i understand it from a promotional aspect
but cant they just make it so that if you want to tweet you have to use your real name and your home address is fully registered (a bit like youtube are doing) so that with their name on display people will be a bit more considered in their comments.
maybe people should have a registered universal on-line profile that means all social or public forum content is accountable, as someone who doesn’t troll and lives an honest (mostly) life id have no issue with such a thing, always thought those national id cards were a good idea, to me these things all encourage self policing. i know its something allot of people would disagree with me on, and i know their may be freedom of speech concerns but theirs a difference between constructive criticism and bilious hateful comments (which as far as im concerned to be a member of decent society you indeed have no rights to make)
My main issue with all the media surrounding this abuse is that it only appears to be when celebrities are abused that the authorities take action. What about the 14 year old girl that is seriously bulled and ends up scarred or considers taking her life due to the abuse? Which is a real possibility.. Yet, the police only show interest when there is a volume of complaints so the abuse can not just go unnoticed.
Exactly for a spell of time my sisters life was made hell by an ex on twitter and other social networking etc and the police wanted nothing to do with it, in this case and obviously I do not condone it but a polite word in his ear to ‘f off and leave her alone’ did the trick, this really is just publicity for the police surely ?
If the person is using social networks to do it, why not just block/unfriend them?
Because it does not take 5 minutes to create a new twitter and it does not take 5 minutes to spread a rumour even of your are blocked or not friended by them, he was the most manipulative person I have ever met and at one point even had the school on to my sister for bullying him while she was self harming and to be honest was a wreck luckily counselling worked and he has left her alone but coming from a family in which depression (chemical not oh I feel sad today depression) is common it could have ended a lot worse.
Because teenagers find a way to bully using social media, you can block a million times but it’ll keep happening. Plus teenagers don’t just want to leave social media either.
Agree with Josh in that this is all about publicity for the police.
Thanks for the support *starred*
Why thank you
Was it really abuse? I thought the kid just said his dad would be disappointed in him.
Nah there were threats made in other tweets.
Who cares, I bet half the people who use Twitter do that as well. What is so special about this one guy? Just search the word “China” while Olympic matches are on, and you will find that racist comments do take over.
If you are using Twitter which open for public, you should be ready for that sort of thing happen down to personal level. The best thing to deal with this is to put up with it and fight back with your success, and I’m sure the Olympics leading board show you just about what you needed to see.