As per usual, the media are misreporting this, and saying/suggesting that police are investigating cause the troll made a remark about Tom "letting his late father down".
Well, that would just be as silly as it sounds.
Not that the police don't often do very silly things.
Firstly, they have not yet said exactly why they are investigating this self-confessed violent racist - it may be because of "other things" revealed in his Twitter account and/or boasted about in other tweets.
Whatever, he didn't just insult Tom Daley, he threatened him and others.
These tweets got increasingly aggressive, til we got threats of arson, physical violence, and then death threats.
Probably not a very credible threat [These do look more like teenage twattery this morning] - but the police have a duty to investigate.
Sledgehammer/nut? Probably, we don't know yet.
Should sending offensive or insulting tweets be against the law? Of course not.
Anyway, here's a selection of his charming tweets...
PS As before, I am happy to concede I'm not being entirely rational and dispassionate about this one, and may be just a little bit hypocritical...
Still, you wouldn't expect logic or consistency from little old me, would you?
Posts
The troll has been arrested... best it happen that way than YOU finding out where he lives eh?
ReplyDeleteI was so angry about all this last night that thought actually crossed my mind.
DeleteOh dear.
You may be right - arrersted over violent racist tweets apparently
ReplyDeleteThe media seem to be under the misapprehension that this is about Tom Daley and the vast majority of outrage is driven purely by the attacks on him (and probably by people that just want to fuck him).
ReplyDeleteGod knows where they got that impression from...
I hope this teenager's life is ruined by all this.
I agree with the torrent of comments I saw on twitter last night suggesting he was likely on the dole - nothing more disgusting than people on the dole, is there?
Apart from stupid moronic teenagers who tweet offensive idiotic crap, maybe. Thank God there aren't many of those in the world...
Well done, "Twittersphere"!!
There are some double standards here, of course.
DeleteAlso Twitter - like chat rooms, like the blogosphere - has a tendency to get overheated, intemperate, personally abusive etc etc.
I tweeted about this yesterday evening and looking back in the cold light of day it was pretty much fuelled by anger, and I abandoned many of my principles.
Perhaps I could claim it was a "crime of passion"?
But wait and see if he's charged, and if so what he's charged with.
He's a cunt, clearly, but that's not a criminal offence - but I understand the police are interested in "other things".
Wait and see.
I keep thinking all this over, brings up some interesting contradictions...
I wouldn't worry about it, he's clearly a dickhead.
DeleteProbably deserves whatever he gets.
The police will charge him with something, given the attention.
Astonishing that this made front page news, though.
I hate that critical mass thing where everyone is egging each other on and on twitter you get the hash-tags and the retweets and before long you get this unthinking mass multiplying exponentially entirely unaware about what truly motivates them/it.
Or something.
Oh well, c'est la vie x
The lads like a young John Terry!
ReplyDeleteI thought his account had been taken down from Twitter but it's still up and he's still tweeting and he's got 50,000 followers now... :(
ReplyDeleteOh fuck.
ReplyDeleteWhen I spoke to someone at the Met about this, he said the first course of action would be to contact Twitter - meaning they'd tell people to do that, before they tried to get the police involved.
He also said they'd had a lot of complaints (as had two other police forces), so fuck knows why it's still up - esp if you look at the violations and as the police are investigating it...
I've emailed them, but registering a complaint on Twitter is like trying to register a complaint on amazon or something.
ie Too complicated for words.
OBVIOUSLY YOU CAN'T JUST PHONE THEM UP!!!
Would that be too much to ask?
Jeez.