Last night I found myself unable to sleep and thought that a browse on twitter might help me drift off. However, all it did was infuriate me at the sheer awfulness of some people in the 'twittersphere'.
'Twitter Trolls' are people who are well known to the media and there is often some article on a celebrity who has been 'trolled' on twitter. What this means is that some keyboard warrior has decided to harass someone by tweeting them some sort of rude or disgusting remark.
Now I have always known of these people but never really paid much attention to it. This is mainly because I don't believe they should be given the publicity they so desperately want. However, last night I saw something that made my blood boil.
Piers Morgan is well known for his opinionated and provocative tweets which always get a reaction. I do follow him on twitter and though he does irritate me sometimes, I do admire the way he goes about it. Yesterday was no different in him replying to the odd tweet which disagreed with his opinions but what caught my eye was not the tweet @piersmorgan was replying to but the tweet below it. @ShaunLFC4 tweets (as seen above) 'Get cancer Piers'.
This instantly made me question why anyone would firstly, wish that upon anyone and secondly, why would you make such a disgusting comment on a social media website where anyone can see it. Moreover, what can motivate you so much to say such a thing?! My hatred for this individual lead to me replying to him with a rather colourful tweet asking if this guy was for real? (Not those exact words). He then replied stating 'rugby players drink each other's piss'. At this point I understood that he had gone to my profile to gain some ammo to slate me. His comment was so idiotic and embarrassing I didn't see the point in pursuing any argument further and allowing him to waste anymore of my time.
Yet when I eventually put my phone down it made me think. With myself having a close friend going through the nightmare of cancer I couldn't quite contemplate the mind of someone who would wish cancer on anybody. Furthermore, how people like this get away with saying these things.
People might say that me writing a blog about it is giving them publicity and that any publicity is good publicity. But more has to be done against this vermin. Whether it is the blocking of accounts, the knowing of who these people are so they can be revealed to the public or even going down the very real legal prosecution of these people.
I cannot just sit by and accept that these people are allowed to do such a thing. Twitter is a weird and wonderful thing. About 70% of the news I read is through newspapers twitter feeds, it is the quickest way to find out about anything now. More so, you see some of the sheer brilliance of peoples humour and wit on twitter and the recent replies to the ISIS threat to attack the Roman Colosseum was both hilarious and inspiring. http://www.theladbible.com/articles/isis-threaten-rome-with-attack-but-italians-don-t-give-a-sh-t < read this if interested.
It is true that there will always be people who feel the need to make fake accounts and discriminate, harass or just be plain horrible and yes they should usually be ignored. But when someone finds it this easy to make such a horrible statement then lets publicise them. Reveal them to the world as really, the world isn't that awful and the cruel and small-minded are the minority and any minority can be made to feel small and weak.
The pen will always be mightier than the sword but it can be used both ways. I do believe that people are finally starting to realise the very real problem of twitter trolls and starting to sort it, or at least minimise it. The one piece of mind I do have however is that the people who do this will never get far enough in life to be in a position whereby they can make these disgusting statements to the celebrities face's.
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