Anyone who dips their toe into the waters of social media knows that, while it can be a lot of fun, it can also be a very dark place indeed.
Poor Sue Perkins, a delightful woman and one of the hosts of the hugely popular Great British Bake Off, has been forced to abandon Twitter after receiving death threats.
Her ‘crime’? She just happened to be one of those mentioned as a possible replacement for sacked Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson and, as a result, received a barrage of disgraceful tweets with one idiot demanding she be “burned to death”.
You have to be incredibly thick-skinned to be able to laugh off such abuse and I’m not surprised that Sue didn’t want to be subjected to any more rantings from sickos spewing out their bile.
These sorts of losers clearly have no life and no friends, but sadly they get some kind of kick out of knowing they have inflicted hurt and sometimes downright fear and dread.
Cyber-threats and bullying are extremely serious.
Young people in particular have been known to take their own lives because they simply cannot cope with the barrage of hatefulness they receive.
Once, bullying would have stopped at the school gates when you left the playground, but now it can be inflicted 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It’s a mean-spirited, cowardly and evil way to inflict genuine pain and suffering and it ruins people’s lives.
There are those like Piers Morgan who has the hide of a rhino and not only cheerfully retweets the abuse he receives, he also (hilariously) corrects the moronic spelling of those who insult him so horribly.
That is a brilliant way to deal with it, but not everyone is as strong as Piers and it is never really a good idea to feed the trolls.
Instead, you can just block them, but they often pop up again from under a stone using another name.
I find it astonishing that Sue Perkins suffered such vileness just because her name happened to be connected to a TV show about cars.
It’s also very unfair that she is the one forced off Twitter when the trolls can still perch there like malevolent vultures waiting to swoop down on their next victim.
What really irks me is that they will probably be feeling all smug and satisfied because in their twisted little minds they will have scored some sort of ‘victory’ because Sue has been so badly affected.
I hope that all the supportive messages she received will make her feel better and that she manages to bounce back very soon.
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