This is far more significant than just another suicide (if it is a suicide). It illustrates my negative feelings about Twitter/Facebook/You Tube - give the average person a voice and most a) don't know how to use it and b) cannot cope with the unexpected consequences when they are thoughtless.

This woman wasn't one of the truly nasty malicious trolls - many of whom are now in prison. Nor the more subtle trolls (see Honey and Hedda's posts in other threads). They are a bit more cunning but will end up the same way eventually.

But the moment "friends" became anonymous names one click of the mouse away, superficiality took a giant leap. I've had comments about "can't believe you have only one Twitter friend". I simply don't follow people - with one exception (the person who first told me about Twitter). Ditto very few Facebook friends (only when it's the best way to contact people).

Like friendship, you have to earn the right to comment. And be responsible in the way you do it (as I learned over ten years once a week in The Sun).

And the role of the media in all this - quite apart from carrying the original posts, how about the way they exposed and hounded and terrified her? Even us - here - saying she looked like a typical troll. The Leveson Inquiry really shirked their responsibilities - by blaming a government set "agenda" and the Judge's interpretation thereof.

I’ve never understood why so many of these keyboard warriors were drawn to the McCann case - what business is it of theirs, and who the hell are they? Why focus their energies anonymously on something that has absolutely nothing to do with them?
Similarly, I despair of the media environment that has allowed this mindset to thrive. Once upon a time there were investigative journalists - some would specialise in radio & tv, some for newspapers and other publications. Martin Brunt is an example of the new breed of journalistic ‘trainers’, professional shit-stirrers who see themselves as judge, jury & executioner & using social media for the much the same reasons as the home warriors - to condemn, to ‘out’, to provoke. To hell with the values they came into the industry with, you have to ‘move with the times’. In turn, the legacy of these middle-aged charlatans is a newer breed of younger journalist who barely *think* at all - they simply are there to do whatever it is their employer demands without question, without context and, they would like to think, without consequence. Daleks with iPads.
Far from any contrition, most of todays papers seized upon the story with unrepentant glee - a ‘Dead Troll’ and Maddie on the front page! I’m surprised some enterprising soul hasn’t thrown Jimmy Savile into the equation too - maybe that will be for Tuesdays front pages?

I can’t say I feel much sympathy for ‘Sweepyface’ either - society is going down the shitter at a rate of knots, and both sides of this particular circus act seem to be doing their best to drive us over the Cliff. Lemmings with no sense of responsibility or conscience. People reap what they sow.

Agree Chris - but let's move on and suggest what should be done about it.

First, the Leveson Inquiry should either be reopened or scrapped and a broader Inquiry set up including such vital ingredients as ONLINE (and traditional media behaviour towards it); the relationship between media and police (an interesting development here; the Mail, clearly irritated by the way police treated journalists, have gone into a BBC type attack on police at every turn… why didn't they know about the Latvian, why didn't they find his body sooner, why did they know about Savile and do nothing…); why cannot coverage of beheadings and terrorism be more responsible?

A horrible incident. I'd avoided reading about it previously, but looking at the reports today, Sky News seems, yet again, to have behaved very badly. This after another of their reporters goes to the site of a plane crash and has a rummage through the luggage bags of the deceased on live TV. Rupert must be so proud. As for twitter well, it's creating a generation of people who are incapable of having an unpublished thought. If they're not engraving their evanescent observations and fleeting feelings on their skin in the form of tattoos, they're tweeting them throughout the day. Very depressing.

IMPORTANT - Honey's point on the other thread, that she thought the woman looked quite ordinary and normal. I think that's what frightens me about Twitter, Facebook etc. We all have some slightly odd opinions. Me on Open Borders for example. I can quite see how my belief that the human species is now global and has become even more so due to the Internet, so we should open all borders and cope with the consequences - might appear mad to many.

But most ordinary people have - shall we say - controversial opinions on one topic or another. Many believe in the judicial system and the media, for example, and thus consider me a vile pervert.

Some think the McCanns shouldn't have left their kids alone. Others go further.

Trouble is - these extreme opinions can be very hurtful and even destructive. Not everyone has as thick a skin as me (or does not consider such opinions worth bothering with). So they can go from being irritating to being really upsetting. And often the people giving those opinions don't think about that and get worse and worse (we all exaggerate - especially false accusers).

Then, if and when the trolls get found out, the spotlight turns onto them. And, as expected, they find it slightly disturbing. Or very disturbing indeed. Or even too much to bear.

What I will never understand is why people get so involved with something that is nothing to do with them such the McCann saga. As much as I don't suffer fools, I always think automatically think about the impact anything I do or say has on others. That seems to be something rapidly vanishing from this society.
The 'issues' I have been drawn to have been ones that impact me directly - either in the sense of being a cultural/music archivist/historian/writer or as just being a man in 21st Century Britain. Frothing at the mouth about a middle-class family with missing child just seems to me...mad.
Trolls and journalists - what's the difference nowadays, a job title & salary?

agree with Mr Retro but this is sooo complicated.

Also appears that that hapless lady may have also been an active Twitterer to the Sky News reporter who button -holed her in the street.

I've only ever seen two abushees ( is that a word?) who handled it well..one was JK & the other a bloke I know in Sydney who made very shonky "locks' to put on your steering wheel.
He was ambushed by a TV crew about these shonky wheel locks...acted absolutely shocked they didn't work and promised to improve them and within the month was appearing in TV advert with his New Wheel Lock as seen on tabloid TV !!

others rev these people up though and are oblivious to the damage they do to vulnerable people..the David Ickes, Bill Baloneys & Chris Spiveys (there are dozens of them) who accuse all & sundry of all manner of crimes they couldn't have a frigging clue about.

Even worse they will probably claim she was bumped off by the CIA or Illuminati or Leon Brittan & the McCanns and so on.

Anna is again very good on this - naturally. www.annaraccoon.com

The world is full of sad and pathetic individuals

"give the average person a voice and most a) don't know how to use it and b) cannot cope with the unexpected consequences when they are thoughtless."

What a bunch of elitist crap that is.

First off, who is to say what is correct and incorrect use of a voice. Secondly, who the fuck are you to say who should have one. Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains. What gives you the right to a voice? Some would say vile perverts should have none.

The answer is, nature. And anyone who proposed to take it from you needs a good reason for doing so. How quickly you forget. If we allow governments to unilaterally and arbitrarily deny us voices, unless we use them "appropriately", pretty soon you'll be offline. Our freedom is smoke if we cannot speak without permission. And who is to decide right from wrong, truth from falsehood?

By your lights Gallilleo was silenced, and a pantheon of dissenters replete through all of history with him, all of them taken to be dangerous, or evil, or abusive, or whatever the pejorative of optimal opprobrium was for the time.

Have you never stopped to think what a tyrants charter your position on "trolls" is.

And what gut-wrenching hypocrisy for you to say, so disingenuously, that this lady is to blame for not knowing the consequences of using her voice. It was the tribal hatred of people like you, directed towards her in this repressive society so quick to marshall deviants into line with supposed "decency" and normative standards, that really killed her, not the freedom to use her voice. Indeed it was the collective instinct of unfreedom to speak, of loyal obedience to perceived power, that was her undoing. The correct response for you would be to hold your head.

John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" makes clear that the main reason to allow the natural freedom to speak in general is that no one but no one can be an ultimate authority on truth, and because we will always end up prohibiting speech we perceive to be false, we will run the risk of repressing the truth. What happens, then, when no one can speak except what is true? We end up a uniform coddled bunch of slaves to convention chanting our mantras in the echo chamber.

And we lay down rules of propriety. No swearing. No bad words. No trolling. No whatever. Does that work? Does it heck. Can our censors be relied on the censor in equal measure the bad language or our friends and our enemies? Of course not. And a troll is just someone the collective dislikes, and whose questions are inconvenient, and whose claims we disagree with. But we might be wrong. That is crucial, and for that reason it is better to allow speech no matter how vulgar and disagreeable.

In the end, speech is only purturbations of the air, or black marks on a white background. It harms no one.

I concede we may have to make exceptions in the textbook case of the man yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre. Maybe. But in this case someone making black marks on a white background was causing no real physical harm and all our freedom, including our freedom to stand up against oppression and institutional paedohysteria depends on being able to do what some will condemn as trolling.

Unless you are quite sure you are right about everything, in which case I'm quite sure you're a bigot. And I find nothing more frightening than the instinct to slavver to power and convention out of a motive of bigotry. Let the people speak.

Chris Retro wrote:
What I will never understand is why people get so involved with something that is nothing to do with them such the McCann saga.

It's because they can, Chris.

Can you imagine any one of these people writing a coherent letter to a newspaper and having it published? Of course not. But with Twatter and other "toys of the imbeciles" they can play to their hearts desire - and they feel they have actually achieved something !

Look ... I have 100 (brain dead) followers !

Well who threw YOU a bone, Jim? I take some of your points but there is no excuse for the vicious, nasty, hurtful things trolls post. Yes we can question accepted theories. Yes we can wonder about attitudes. But let us do it politely. Kindly. Decently. If people can't do it that way they should not do it at all. That may be elitist. Correct.

Jim wrote:

John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" makes clear that the main reason to allow the natural freedom to speak in general is that no one but no one can be an ultimate authority on truth, and because we will always end up prohibiting speech we perceive to be false, we will run the risk of repressing the truth.

Mill isn't a wise choice as an authority here, because he's hopelessly confused. Part of him is a product of the classic Enlightenment's conviction that if you think 'properly,' (eg like him), we'll all end up agreeing, so we'll have to resort to deliberately playing devil's advocate to generate some artificial diversity. But he also makes the claim you cite. He's much more fascinating for his contradictions.

TH Green wrote:
Jim wrote:

John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" makes clear that the main reason to allow the natural freedom to speak in general is that no one but no one can be an ultimate authority on truth, and because we will always end up prohibiting speech we perceive to be false, we will run the risk of repressing the truth.

Mill isn't a wise choice as an authority here, because he's hopelessly confused. Part of him is a product of the classic Enlightenment's conviction that if you think 'properly,' (eg like him), we'll all end up agreeing, so we'll have to resort to deliberately playing devil's advocate to generate some artificial diversity. But he also makes the claim you cite. He's much more fascinating for his contradictions.

I'm afraid I don't quite see the contradiction there. I'm sure he believed in the singularity of truth, like Plato, and if indeed he did think that he alone had a monopoly on it then there would be a contradiction, but his whole point is that no one can be sure he is, as you put it, "thinking properly" and for that reason we must be willing to subject our ideas to the scrutiny of rational debate, so there's no contradiction really.

andrew wrote:
The world is full of sad and pathetic individuals
I think this sums it up. She chose to make those comments. Someone asked her about them. She chose the outcome. The reason for a 63-year-old behaving like that in the first place probably had more to do with her final choice than any intervention by Sky news.

In The Know wrote:
Chris Retro wrote:
What I will never understand is why people get so involved with something that is nothing to do with them such the McCann saga.

It's because they can, Chris.

Can you imagine any one of these people writing a coherent letter to a newspaper and having it published? Of course not. But with Twatter and other "toys of the imbeciles" they can play to their hearts desire - and they feel they have actually achieved something !

Look ... I have 100 (brain dead) followers !

fancy quoting ITK but..

looking at Twitter can be fascinating (I won't join because I think as JK does- it's a Tool Of The Devil )but it is illuminating to examine people's followers more closely,

MWT for example- if you look at many of his Twitter 'friends' (I last only a few pages) they are actually the sort of trolls like this poor woman- feeding off his pedo stuff and a'ranting and a'raving about elite conspiracies etc etc.

Others seem to mindlessly post links to daily newspapers as though their followers are incapable of looking up these stories themselves.

One thing I've noticed : some who were active Twitterers like Stephen Fry & Ricky Gervais have really dropped off now (Gervais mainly Twits pics of his cat)

But social media can be dangerous (and it was for this woman) : As Anna Racooon has shown the Jimmy Savile fiasco was hatched on a discussion board : the Cliff Richard fiasco has been bubbling along for years on the net and the Mainstream Media is now so desperate it looks to the net for tales.

So while Jim may have got a point consider this : Rupert Murdoch has used his Social Media ( Fox etc) to ramp up an invasion of Iraq in 2003 : analysts says both the UK & USA would not have gone to war without his vocal support- and look where that has got us.

Josef Goebbels used the Social media of the time,newspapers & radio to successful woe a nation for a bunch of madmen to take over.

It's the way you Tweet what you think and also keeping your opinions and thoughts within the boundaries of decency. Nobody wants to block out the ability to communicate and, as Jim says, without the Internet my own thoughts would have been virtually silenced. But we must not let the positive aspects of new media suffocate criticism of the bad side.

The other point is that some weak characters (not necessarily stupid) allow more cunning manipulators to twist them towards the dark side. The truly evil trolls don't post. They nudge others into them. I gather that is what happened to this lady. Her online "contacts" are being examined closely.

hedda wrote:
fancy quoting ITK

... all the best people do !

(Gervais mainly Twits pics of his cat)

Do these people not have lives to lead?
How do they find the time to bother looking what someone had for breakfast?

There are, for me, simply not enough hours in the day to bother wasting any of it reading all this drivel !

JK2006 wrote:
It's the way you Tweet what you think and also keeping your opinions and thoughts within the boundaries of decency. Nobody wants to block out the ability to communicate and, as Jim says, without the Internet my own thoughts would have been virtually silenced. But we must not let the positive aspects of new media suffocate criticism of the bad side.

The other point is that some weak characters (not necessarily stupid) allow more cunning manipulators to twist them towards the dark side. The truly evil trolls don't post. They nudge others into them. I gather that is what happened to this lady. Her online "contacts" are being examined closely.


It is a shame that unless you hire a firm to scour the internet for offensive messages so you can sue (as the McCanns do) and can afford the very "best" lawyers (as the McCanns do) your complaints of harassment are almost always ignored.

There have been suggestions that the McCann "supporters" try to create a situation by provoking a response and then withdrawing their own tweets so it looks worse out of context.
It is legal, and if you fall for it is is your own stupid fault, but in my view it is not ethical to encourage offensive posts when the aim of the job is to protect the McCanns (and particularly the children) from harm and upset.

It is a great shame that people who have protested against the lack of proper investigation, and those who fight to protect the McCanns from unfair suspicion have succumbed to competitiveness and rivalry, because surely everyone shares the same aim.. for the truth to come out without suppression, and to find out what happened to the child?