You know, usually I’m all for tracking down trolls and righting internet wrongs, but this situation seems to me to be one of those rare ones that call for the “just ignore them” technique. I mean, Rawstory, Back2Stonewall — are these important websites/people? I mean, he called his lawyer because some troll put up a fake account on Twitter to mess with him? So some assholes fell for it. So what?I don’t get the big deal. It’s Twitter. Who cares.
Here is what should have been Mr. Gutfield’s response to all this: “The ‘so-and-so’ that has been Twittering all those things is not me, but someone who set up an account pretending to be me. Here is what they did.” Then put up the explanation of how Twitter is case sensitive so you can set up a “fake” account by just changing capitalization of a single letter. End of story. All the hyperventilating about how he’d have been “ruined” and that they might have talked about him on MSNBC (o horrors! does anyone still watch MSNBC except irate rightwing bloggers who want something to be mad about?) just plays into the hands of trolls and bullies like TwItter guy and the gay guy at Back2Stonewall, who need the validation of people like Greg Gutfield wasting time on them like Paris Hilton needs purse dogs and KY Jelly. We need to stop doing this.
(Via.)
Well, the problem is that his own use of social media could be considered important to his professional life, so I can see it.
Something called “Twitter” is much too silly and slight a thing to hang a career on. As is all “social media.” I realize by saying so I run against the mainstream, and probably reality, but I refuse to buy into the necessity of hanging one’s career aspirations and future on methods that should have been left behind in high school. In the world before “social media” was invented, there was something called “gossip,” and yes, it could destroy reputations, but instead of being lauded as a necessary networking tool gossip was universally condemned and its results deplored. Now we have people openly admitting that they accept that gossip is something they’ll just put up with in order to keep their place in the fame cage. Do not want.
I don’t disagree at all, I just mean that I can see why Gutfield would see the fight of value.
Also, he does have to worry about enough people believing the troll Twitter account was real to make him lose his job, so it’s not like he can completely ignore it.
Media outlets are gutless enough (no pun intended) that people have lost their jobs because of social-media ambushes like that one. So I can’t say I blame Greg for fighting it like he did.
Sadly, he probably would have also lost his job if he’d found a way to track down the imposter and feed him to a Burmese python in the Everglades.
Yeah – for importing a non-local species into the ‘Glades.
The python or the troll?
The pythons are already there, so it must be the troll.