I have been using social media avidly since before Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin existed. I was one of the first to join all three when they became available in the UK. My @Bruciebabe account has nearly 4,000 followers and over 100,000 Tweets. My Linkedin has 1,335 Connections. I founded Artforums.co.uk and have been running it since 2006. I have been very active on many other forums. I have been involved in social media marketing for a number of companies.
All the above is not a boast. It is just my credentials when it comes to understanding Trolling. Trolling is not what the press and politicians seem to think it is. Trolling is writing something that will annoy someone. So if a stupid leftie (the only kind) is on Twitter and I tell them that Margaret Thatcher was the greatest ever British Prime Minster (which is the truth) or that Gordon Brown trashed the British economy (also the truth) then that is Trolling.
Instead the press and politicians seem to think that Trolling is being abusive and/or threatening. They are wrong. Personally I really like it when people are abusive to me online. It means that I have won and that they have lost. That they have no answer to my arguments, so all that they can do is to be abusive. Obviously I tell them this, then I get rid of them by blocking or muting. There is no point in continuing to engage with them if they have lost and are so limited in their intellect. I have even received a Twitter death threat, from the typical online scouser “victim”. This took all of 2 seconds to block. And the poor sociopathic soul would fill his pants if he met me in the real world. Start Tweeting about Hillsborough and debating where the “blame” could lie and you will soon have a timeline full of badly educated, low IQ inadequates. Talking about Madelaine McCann and her self evidently inept parents who deserted her to go boozing and you can invoke a similar response.
One thing that is very annoying is when manipulative attention seekers use these abusive Tweeters for their own self publicity. Engaging with them, replying and retweeting to wind the fools up. So their Tweets become more and more abusive. Then, once they are really bad, simultaneously going to the police and to the press. You all know the manipulative people I am talking about. I think that these are the real nasty people on Twitter. They are the ones who should go to prison (hyperbole) for entrapment and provocation. It takes 2 seconds to mute someone and deprive them of a voice. Instead these attention seekers do their uttermost to put the abusers in prison for their own publicity purposes.
Now I would like to talk about the richness of the English language, the language of Shakespeare. We use many fantastic figures of speech in our daily conversations, hyperbole, irony, sarcasm, facetiousness, satire, mockery, lampoon, pastiche, caricature, parody, ridicule and more. Many of these can be use for Trolling in the true sense of the word. They can also be used for “taking offence” by those who like to take offence. Personally I think anyone who takes offence should be taken outside and shot in front of their family. They are only using it as a mechanic to enforce their (usually politically correct) opinions and views on the rest of the world.
Now Chris Grayling is talking about putting internet “Trolls” in prison for two years. The man is mad. We live in a world where there are many thousands of child victims of organised Pakistani and freemason paedophilia. The police have done little or nothing about this for decades, even on the many occasions that it has been reported to them. Yet being rude online is somehow more important. Online conversations are just like pub conversations, short term ephemera, quickly forgotten, of zero importance. Yet politicians want to waste police resources on rude inadequates instead of on real monsters. And the politicians conveniently ignore the self publicist wind up merchants who deliberately provoke the abuse. The world has gone mad.
What is really happening here is that we are having our freedom of speech taken from us. That the establishment don’t like the way that social media allows them to be questioned. So they seek to censor it. Even when the existing laws of incitement, abuse and libel are more than adequate to deal with any problem that might exist.
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fuck off 🙂 call the police on me fat man.
I think when the McCann and judy finnigan call the police they act.
If I call the police and say Simon from next door posted a picture of me gardening – they will come round an punch me and post that themselves.
what would happen in court?
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Hi Stuart. Your IP address is 89.241.144.19 and you obviously didn’t read the article.
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What utter nonsense you utter Bruce. You’re not interested in free speech one iota – you only have to look at your behaviour across various internet forums over the years. From proclaiming that Raoul Moat’s actions were justified because “women are snakes with tits” and that he only shot at “the filth” throught to deliebrately targeting the families of people who lost loved ones at Hilsborough and posting offensive unecessary comments at their expense just for the lols. I’ve seen you and a number of other libertarian buddies do this over and over to anyone who you perceive as a “lefty” or opposed to your world view. At best its a deeply unpleasant way to get your kicks and at worst its all out bullying designed to hurt and upset your targets. You’re not some kind of free speech champion – just a deeply unpleasant bully and motormouth.
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Mark. Oh look, I have approved your prevarication and equivocation laden comment. I very much doubt that you would do the same.
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Hi again Bruce, I entirely agree with you.
I’ve been trolling David Icke’s forum for years and have been very successful with taking positions which forum members have found difficult to refute.
These members include high ranking freemasons who I have exposed for what they are, “secretive groups of weak men and women, who work against the interests of the common man.” I consider it an essential challenge to break through untruths and this works the same for David Icke as it does for people like David Cameron and the like.
If I lose the right to this, then I will go underground and continue to have my say.
If a troll is someone who disagrees with molestation and injustice, then troll means good and I will always be that troll.
I have the scars to show for years of standing up against those who only have their own interests at heart to the detriment of the many.
Regards,
Steve R