Just Don't Look, Just Don't Look.

Hahaha. A wry laugh escapes me once more, as yet again Twitter abuse is thrust into our faces like the inevitable cream pie into the face of the village jester.

Poor Twitter. What was meant to be a simple online method of communication (even simpler so than Facebook) has now exploded into a bubbling pot of easy controversy and rattling cages. There have been some minor incidents regarding Twitter being used to send out ill-thought-out messages by certain professional footballers. I say minor, only because of the utterly high levels of idiocy relating to them. Oh is that right, Rio Ferdinand? Your brother accuses another professional football player of racial abuse and you decide the best course of action is to tweet a racial slur against someone else? Brilliant, top-notch thinking. Someone get the man a job as a peace-negotiator.

Why are footballers allowed to access the Internet in the first place? Some of them have enough trouble tying their laces.

Anyway, Twitter is once again embroiled in senseless abuse controversy. One case involved a user called riley_69 who had the British diver Tom Daley in his cross-hairs, and the other I believe is happening right now as of 7:51pm of 9th August 2012, involving Kenneth Tong and Gary Barlow.

I'll leave that to sink in for a moment. You're probably looking at the name Kenneth Tong and trying to remember if he's famous or not, seeing as I presented it in such a way. Well, that's the thing. He isn't. He was on Big Brother some time ago, and caused "controversy" by escaping the house via the rooftop which, considering the normal level of shenanigans in the house is pretty tame in comparison.

So here you have a 20-something, fame-hungry, self-proclaimed "playboy"; hurt on being lost in the shuffle of other mindless attention grabbers, and (apparently) a teenager who's profile picture is of himself with no shirt on, which by the wafer thin rules of social networking immediately decrees you as a tosser.

Yet here they are, senselessly attacking two credible members of the British public; an Olympic diver and a famous and well-liked singer. It's hard to distinguish which is more abhorrent, but what's somehow twice as sickening is the lack of any remorse from their actions. Immediately after the inevitable backlash from fans and friends alike of the affected parties, their stance changes into the 'me against the world' mentality and invites all comers to be angry and call them nasty names.

Once again I roll my eyes at the 'come at me bro' attitude. An attitude born from an Internet meme. A meme, for goodness sake. Trust idiots like them to ruin what was once purely a little bit of fun and maintained some sort of humour when not a lot of people understood them and were embracing them. Yet, this attitude is indeed working; people are still getting worked up and calling them vile and nasty and thus, they indeed get what they want. Attention.

I am willing to see there is some justification in Riley_69 behaving the way he did (he is, after all, just a teenager, and for goodness sake, he links a porn site on his profile) and hopefully he can understand the consequences of what he's done, but there simply is no excusing a mid-20's cretin (I'm unable to refer to Kenneth as a human being without blood shooting out of my ears) rolling out these jokes without a care. But what can we do then to deal with them?

Simple. I take this inspiration from an early Treehouse of Horror segment from the Simpsons entitled "Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores". While the town is being destroyed by 50 foot version of advertisements, Lisa comes up with the idea of just not paying attention and diverting their attention elsewhere. When the advertisements see this, they try harder to get attention, but with the perseverance of the townsfolk, they fall one by one and cease to destroy the town. As ridiculous as it sounds, why can it not apply here?

They are purely looking for a reaction. That's all. If they don't get a reaction, they look more foolish than they already do. It really is that simple. Unfortunately, I seem to be the minority in thinking this. Looking at his page, for every person saying to ignore him and saying exactly what I said, there's 100 others calling for his ban and saying he's sick. A ban which is utterly useless when he's got any other method of social media to do exactly the same thing.

Of course I'm appalled and disappointed by the whole thing, but for every time he knows he's getting under our skin, the further he'll relent with this. So just ignore it. He'll get reported, he'll surely suffer consequences of some kind. Let him imagine he's having fun. In the meantime, enjoy yourself. Go out. Enjoy the sun. Play football. Finish that book you were meant to finish. Or abandon all social contact to watch the Olympics. Laugh at the countries with the funny names.

And then feel remorse for it afterwards, you horrible, horrible person.