Things that caught my eye on Twitter in January
Posted on 9th February 2012Gary Glitter appeared on Twitter You would be forgiven for thinking that Gary Glitter would stay well away from the internet so when his ‘official account’ Twitter.com/OfficialGlitter popped up, the Tweetsphere was shaken. Critics claimed from the start that it must be a fake and account was never verified, but people still appeared to take it very seriously, issuing death threats and hurling abuse.
Later a man known only as Ben admitted that he had set up the account as a social experiment “I set this twitter account up as a social experiment to highlight the dangers and safety of children using the social networking sites and to discover and question public morality. It’s been an interesting and eye-opening experience for me.”
Glitter wasn’t the only person to be impersonated, the real Rupert Murdoch set up a Twitter account on New Year’s Eve and Twitterati chucked abuse at him (a bit like Axl Rose’s audience hurling bottles at him in Dublin on the Guns n Roses come-back tour in 2010).
This prompted his alleged ‘Missus’ Wendy Deng to create an account to defend her husband. Twitter mistakenly verified this account as real, but it wasn’t long before the person behind it came clean, again remaining anonymous s/he tweeted this
“Hello Twitter. As News International has finally come to their senses, it’s time to confirm that yes, this is a fake account. I’m not Wendi,” @Wendi_Murdoch
Twunce of the month goes to:
Labour MP, Diane Abbott who got herself in trouble and was ordered by Ed Milliband to apologise after making allegedly racist remarks during a conversation on Twitter about Stephen Lawrence’s murderers.
Ms Abbott tweeted “White people love playing ‘divide & rule’. We should not play their game.”
This resulted in a furore; Diane Abbot issued this statement in the aftermath: “I understand people have interpreted my comments as making generalisations about white people. I do not believe in doing that. I apologise for any offence caused.”
She claimed she was taken out of context, whether she was taken out of context or not, it’s a pretty stupid thing to tweet!
*remember kids: EVERYBODY can see what you are tweeting!
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