Bullying over Twitter

I don't think it's right that celebs should "encourage" their fans to bully certain people. But, if someone slags off a sleb, the sleb responds and then hundreds of fans jump on the bandwaggon, it's not really the fault of the celeb - they were just sticking up for themselves.

I don't really understand cyber bullying though. I might be ignorant to it all, but can't you delete or block the person?

Apparently, the girl in the Fielding example went down the formal route, reporting and blocking those who sent her threats. Twitter suspended HER account because it's against the rules to block so many people (maybe it's against the ethos of a "public" forum).

IMO:

Retaliating when someone slags them off... fair enough.

Encouraging fans to start insulting people... not acceptable.

Retweeting insults and threats of violence....really stupid, immature and irresponsible.

I think some of the problem is that if you do the former, the second happens anyway, even if you don't do anything to encourage it.

Good point, I suppose it depends on the scenario. Insulting someone who has insulted you is different to insulting someone who has taken offence at something you've said. I can see why fans wanted to stick up for Simon Pegg and he can't be held responsible for how other people choose to express their feelings about it. Noel Fielding however I think is responsible by re-tweeting and using offensive language in the first place.

Using the Simon Pegg example, Eclair, do you think that he should have responded in a more responsible way, rather than resorting to insults?

Yeah he should, I mixed up the examples and forgot he was encouraging people too so ignore what I said there.

I think that anyone, celebrity or not, should 'think before they type' on places like twitter. However, if they are just retaliating to an insult, not encouraging others to do so then I can cut them a bit of slack because they're only human.

Yeah I know what you mean. It's all too easy to retaliate and type something, press "send" and then think "I shouldn't have done that"

I've actually been on the receiving end of this courtesy of Christian Jessen (I think I've recounted that particular trail of events before). It was horrible, humiliating and scary even though I didn't get any particularly abusive messages. I doubt very much that anyone who joined in with that thought too hard about what it's like to suddenly be inundated with unpleasantness merely for calling a celebrity on their tw*ttish twittering.

In the Filelding case I don't think the girl who pulled him up on the term 'retarded' was technically 'giving it' out therefore she shouldn't be expected to 'take' anything. It's disgusting and I feel really sorry for people who end up feeling like that after online abuse. Right now I feel like celebs/public figures should either a) get off twitter etc completely if they don't want problems or b) not interact with fans in these casual ways and stick to tweeting tour dates and other factual info.

Oh god, really? So the messages weren't challenging what you said, rather out and out insults? How many did you get? Was CJ 'copied in'?

I pulled him up for referring to breastfeeding support workers as "militants" and also challenged his use of the word "bully", to which he responded by inviting his 20k+ followers to tell me how wrong I was. Some of the messages were simple descriptions of things people had experienced, but a lot were simply calling me a ***, Nazi, idiot etc. Last I heard, the GMC were investigating his conduct over the whole thing but I don't know if anything ever came of it.

CO, that sounds dreadful, this phenomenon is clearly not limited to comedians thinking they're being funny.

It strikes me that if someone did this in real life - encouraged others to insult and threaten - they'd be breaking laws on incitement, surely?