Twitter asshole of the day
I haven’t posted one of these in awhile. Thought it would be fun.
About an hour ago, I got this tweet, sent directly to me, but visible in the public twitter timeline:
To which I replied back:
For those of you who don’t know anything about Twitter: You choose whom you want to follow, but as Robert Scoble is so fond of saying, I am not defined by my followers, but rather whom I follow. Any idiot or spammer or stalker can follow you but you have to make a conscious choice to follow them back.
Normally, one gets a notification that someone has decided to follow you. When I do, I scan the timeline of whomever has followed me, check it to see if this person can add anything interesting to my day and follow or not follow accordingly. I have more followers than I follow, which, if you know me at all, isn’t that surprising.
So anyway, at some point in the past, this guy Phuzzehlogik follows me and I elected not to follow him back. I don’t actually remember specifically, but I know that the cutesy phonetics would have turned me off. So really, why the fuck should I care whether or not he follows me or not? He’s the one who was interested in the first place. Further, I’m a shit-stirrer, too, but it’s always about something. Some idea, that is.
Anyway, here’s what he came back with:
To which I replied that I would report him to Twitter for slander. Unfortunately, only threat of violence moves the twitter TOS machine, unlike Wordpress, which has a policy against accusing someone of a crime. Although, technically, I guess pedophilia is not a crime, unless you count thought-crimes. But, whatever. He’s not much different from some of the trolls that have commented on this blog: Reading my every word, able to quote me chapter and verse, hate my guts but still can’t stop reading. I will never ever understand that behavior. I really don’t have enough time or energy to engage with the stuff I love; why would I want to waste life on something I hate. (This post is a counter-example, I guess. But I am enjoying writing it.)
So, I blocked Phuzzehlogik, which is something you do when you encounter assholes on Twitter. They can’t see your updates anymore and you can’t see theirs. (Unfortunately, it seems not to be working at the moment.) This is the first time I’ve ever blocked anyone. I don’t even usually bother to unfollow anyone, either, unless they get too noisy (too many tweets) or say something especially stupid. I’m usually careful whom I follow in the first place and I really don’t want to micromanage twitter anyway.
Further, as many of you know, my tolerance for stupidity was stretched past all reasonable bounds in the Czech Republic: By the Czechs, by the punters and by the boys. So, I can take a lot of noise and a lot of vapidity. I just can’t take being accused of being a pedophile, which, in ideological shorthand, implies child molester. I mean, this guy has his real name, Sean Melton, attached to his Twitter profile and says something like that in a public forum. Amazing really, how retarded people are sometimes.
He hedged a bit by employing a question mark but how is that any different from the classic, “When did you stop beating your wife?”
Here’s yet another tweet from him; they just keep coming:
I think it’s safe to say, Fuzzy Wuzzy Little Sean, that I “fled” the U.S. to get away from stupid faggots like you.
HSB’s reading list for 02/18/2009
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www.dcexaminer.com >> Politics
This delay had nothing to do with sunlight — and everything to do with showmanship.
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Straight Couples in France Are Choosing Civil Unions Meant for Gays – washingtonpost.com
In passing the [civil unions] law without making it specific to gays, however, France distinguished itself from other European countries that have approved civil unions or even marriage for same-sex couples. As a result of that ambiguity, the PACS broadened into an increasingly popular third option for heterosexual couples, who readily cite its appeal: It has the air of social independence associated with the time-honored arrangement that the French call the “free union” but with major financial and other advantages. It is also far easier to get out of than marriage.
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The lights are going out all over Twitter | Technology | guardian.co.uk
[The new law] tells internet service providers that they “must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination” of accounts used by anyone deemed a “repeat infringer” – regardless of whether the person has been convicted of a crime or not.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
HSB’s reading list for 02/17/2009
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Ben Smith’s Blog: Gay snipers stalk WV – Politico.com
The ad, which targets Christian voters, calls for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, something that’s already in place in a majority of states. “A weekend trip to SF for a WV same-sex couple, plus a pro-bono ACLU attorney, could easily become a nightmare for marriage in West Virginia,” says the narrator.
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Holy parody Batman! I just saw over at the Fake Chuck Westfall blog (read *fake* Chuck Westfall blog folks, sorta like that *fake* Steve Jobs blog from a while back) that Canon Inc. and some lawyerish type named Douglas E. Mirell from Loeb & Loeb are trying to shut poor fake Chuck down.
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Wallace Stegner on Profanity – The Atlantic (Fiction Issue 2005)
Words are not obscene: naming things is a legitimate verbal act. And “frank” does not mean “vulgar,” any more than “improper” means “dirty.” What vulgar does mean is “common”; what improper means is “unsuitable.” Under the right circumstances, any word is proper. But when any sort of word, especially a word hitherto taboo and therefore noticeable, is scattered across a page like chocolate chips through a tollhouse cookie, a real impropriety occurs. The sin is not the use of an “obscene” word; it is the use of a loaded word in the wrong place or in the wrong quantity. It is the sin of false emphasis, which is not a moral but a literary lapse, related to sentimentality. It is the sin of advertisers who so plaster a highway with neon signs that you can’t find the bar or liquor store you’re looking for. Like any excess, it quickly becomes comic.
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Here’s how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states has successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets.” Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.
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Why Wikipedia’s Policy to Blacklist Blogs is Outdated and Wrong – ReadWriteWeb
This week we received an email from a reader telling us that he’d tried to add a link to ReadWriteWeb onto a Wikipedia article, only to get the message: “The following link has triggered our spam protection filter: http://www.readwriteweb.com. Either that exact link, or a portion of it (typically the root domain name) is currently blacklisted.” After a bit of investigation, we discovered that our site had been blacklisted by Wikipedia in mid-2008 and labeled as ’spam’! There is no explanation on Wikipedia as to why this happened. We certainly don’t think we’ve done anything that would justify being blacklisted. So after some emailing and twittering, we found out that the way to challenge this blacklisting was to make our case on this Wikipedia page.
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On Darwin’s Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution
On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, a new Gallup Poll shows that only 39% of Americans say they “believe in the theory of evolution,” while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% don’t have an opinion either way. These attitudes are strongly related to education and, to an even greater degree, religiosity.
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The Shorty Awards: Why Nerds Hate Twitter | Epicenter from Wired.com
It’s official. No longer the domain of the digerati, the Twitter short messaging platform has woven itself into regular peoples’ lives to help with practical matters — getting in shape, picking stocks, raising funds for a Senate run or selling cruise ship tickets. For proof, one need look no further than Wednesday night’s Shorty Awards, which honored the best Twitterers as determined by a popular vote.
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Hit & Run > Sheriff Lott’s New Toy – Reason Magazine
The Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff’s Department (that’s them above) just obtained an armored personnel carrier, complete with a belt-fed, .50-cal turreted machine gun. Sheriff Leon Lott has charmingly named the vehicle “The Peacemaker,” and insists that using a caliber of ammunition that even the U.S. military is reluctant to use against human targets (it’s generally reserved for use against armored vehicles) will “save lives.”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
homo superior swears like an enthusiastic porn star
Mumbai on Twitter
Indian authorities have asked people to stop using Twitter to update about the Mumbai terrorist attacks as it might tip off the terrorists. On the other hand, Twitter has been used to update family members and to give a real, immediate sense of what’s happening on the ground and how civilians feel about it. Invaluable as new, I’d say, and ultimately as history. I just got a tweet saying that there were two new blasts coming from the Taj. Find that on CNN, will you? I’m getting 40 tweets every two minutes that have been tagged with #mumbai. When it all hit, it was 80 tweets every five seconds.
Keep tweeting but be careful out there.
Here’s three interesting blogs from Mumbai:
Conversations with Dina
Mumbai Metblogs
Mumbai Help
Updated at 14:05: Turns out false the bit about Indian authorities asking people not to tweet. I’m sure they have better things to worry about that social media.
Social Media