Your stupid is showing, Twitter

As I type this, I’ve finally set my Twitter account to “private.” I know people complain about that and don’t understand why anyone would do such a thing, but I’ll tell you why: because I’m tired of the stupid.

Twitter has always been some on-going IRC that lets its users have way too much anonymity. This leads to people creating abuse accounts that can do nothing but trying to create anger and fighting. And I’m sick of it.

For those who have told me they’ve not encountered this, I am amazed because this stuff happens all the time. Recently people attacked Stephen King for saying something on Twitter. The creator of Flappy Bird was abused online, so he had to drop his game. And this crap doesn’t just happen to celebs, it happens to regular people like me.

First this happened: Olympic snowboarding commentary draws complaints

So, of course since I was part of the 300 complaints, and mentioned on the news report, people took to Twitter to snuff out every single person who used the #BBCSochi hashtag. What it turned into was that the viewers, like myself got hateful, angry @ replies about how we hate the Olympics, Team GB, Jenny Jones, and everything else in the world. Plus, my username including a link to my account was online via the BBC News so I would block one user, and three more would spout something rude back at me.

Even after I deleted the original tweet with the hashtag (which I’m glad I did because I didn’t know BBC News had posted it at the time.) I was getting, “Can’t you see how wrong you are?” posts. Even a UK registered charity had RTed me with some nasty comment about how my saying the commentary was unprofessional was a challenge to them. Absolutely, insanely stupid.

Anyway, so I’m hesitant to post this, but since I privatized the account, I’m hoping that will keep outside viewers from seeing any future posts. I just absolutely cannot stand how ridiculous Twitter has gotten. Your comment on something televised can be posted in the news so people can throw virtual fire at you. I don’t want any other that kind of crap disturbing my peace.

With that said, I’ll post this, keep my account private, and stay off Twitter for a while. I needed that extra push to finally get myself off of it, and this pretty much solidifies it for me. Really makes me sad and angry that the internet has turned into a haven for spambots and trolls, but that’s how things always work. We can’t have nice things because people always ruin it.

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