Twitter Bullying

Everyone and their Mother has had a comment on Ricky Gervais and the "Mong" debate this week. I'm not going to comment much on it here, read Richard Herring blogging on it as he puts it well. Just a couple of things from me, the first being Gervais' comment about how the meaning has changed, look it's in urban dictionary. I'm not sure if he just looked that up to support himself but what the whole thing looks like to me is a 50 year old trying to talk like he's still a teenager and still cool, which is a little pathetic. You could say any word, let's say the N word, being careful how I phrase things here, and say it means something else, then put up a definition to say it doesn't mean what you think it does, it means this. If it doesn't mean what you say to the people you were talking to then you're being offensive. Offensive can be ok in comedy if you're funny enough but in this case I don't think he was. Purely my view.

And we come to the second point here. What happened when he was challenged on the use of the word was that he RT'd the comments and then a whole load of followers decided to attack. From comments on twitter from Richard Herring today he had several thousand people attacking him for daring to query Gervais and his response about the meaning. Quite a few abusive. Which was in a way encouraged by Ricky Gervais. And that to my mind is bullying. There were other people who took it up with him, and some of them also received abuse, I heard someone on the radio yesterday who had been a victim of this as well. Just for disagreeing with someone, and saying they thought he was wrong.

This isn't something that's come out of nowhere, I've seen it happen or heard from other people I follow on twitter that it happened to them. And I don't get why people do this. They follow a celeb, fair enough I follow a few myself, but when someone disagrees with them, or says something they don't like they RT it and then an attack seems to start. I don't understand why people do this? Why go into attack another person because they disagree with something someone else said? They're generally not being abusive, in most cases although some are, and they're only making a point that isn't nasty to anyone else, but thousands can descend on them because of one comment or RT by someone else. There is general nastiness from individuals as well, but when you get a large number of people doing it, that is bullying, led by a sneering idiot usually. It mystifies me why people do this, why you start sending messages because a celeb you follow says something. Do you think you're helpful, do you think you're defending them when you attack someone else, are you being verbally abusive for a reason other than an ego thing, saying I'm defending this person, because I know them, do you think you're friend with the people you follow on twitter? Don't understand it, I really don't.