Twit Her

Twitter provided an unexpected surprise this week. Though before I continue, why is that an acceptable sentence? Surely if it had been expected it would not have been a surprise?

Those of us in the UK can't have escaped the fact that Pope Benedict XVI is visiting our nation, and like many I have been appalled by the stories of abuse and the incumbent Pope's alleged role in assisting in keeping the perpetrators from justice. It is this background that inspired me to reacted to one of the seemingly endless newscasts of the Papal visit with the tweet:

Kid can't believe he saw Pope with his own two eyes. Makes sense, those priests usually approach from the rear.

Now I think that's funny, but I am also well aware that the only person who finds me funny, is me, and I would like to think that the people who follow my tweets accept me for the simple fool I am. The surprise I mentioned arrived a couple of minutes later when I received this from @_Boring1_:

When is it ever funny to make fun of a child that has been molested? Never,it makes you just as sick as the child molester.

I didn't recognise the name of @_Boring1_ as one of my followers so my initial reaction was one of wonder as to who this person was, and my second was to disagree with their reply on a number of levels. Firstly, if there is a victim in my tweet it is the institution that ordains priests, as the inference is that the priest or priests or indeed the whole institution is one of evildoers who would pray on the innocent. Secondly, following @_Boring1_'s logic, any act that has the potential to have a victim would become taboo for humour, which if @_Boring1_ has ever laughed at a Marx Brothers, Three Stooges or Laurel & Hardy movie, or comedians such as Bill Hicks, Eddie Murphy, Richard Prior and George Carlin, makes them a hypocrite, and if they haven't then I simply cannot be dictated to by someone so emotionally crippled. Thirdly, as @_Boring1_ neither follows me nor knows me personally they have no idea who I am or what motivates me to tweet. What if I am a victim of abuse and deal with it through humour, lashing out at the institution that allowed that abuse to happen?

I am now curious though as to who @_Boring1_ is, not only because they felt the need to reply to me but also because they clearly feel morally superior to me and in a position to dictate what I may or may not comment on. So off I pop to Jessica's Twitter page. Jessica describes herself as “a girl,a mom,29 years old.” A 29 year old girl? I would hope that by 29 years of age my daughter would be a woman. Also I notice that while she is proud to boast on her ability to breed, she does not mention a husband or partner. Not that either is a requirement or I believe is a necessity, but I did want to establish the grounds for Jessica's moral superiority claims and why she felt empowered to start dictating morality issues to others.

Having taken the time to search out my tweet and reply to it, I felt it only fair to correct Jessica on her error and so replied:

Phew, good job I didn't actually mock an abused child then. Happy trolling.

I should have known better than to feed the troll but having been attacked by Jessica, who took it upon herself to find my words remember, I never imposed them upon her, I wanted to point out that she was attacking me based on her misunderstanding of what I had written and not what I had actually written. Maybe calling her a troll, while accurate, was a bit rude, but I wasn't abusive and never felt the need to resort to inappropriate language.

Jessica replied again:

Thanks and Happy being a sick fuck.

Obviously Jessica was unable to restrain herself or couldn't articulate her feelings without resorting to abuse. Whichever is the case, how anyone can claim any kind of moral high ground while resorting to that kind of abuse is beyond me, and I would hope beyond any intelligent observer of human behaviour too.

Realising that Jessica would not or could not engage in a rational discussion and was clearly only in the mood to be abusive, I decided to return to the humour:

I'm sick? You're the one chatting up a stranger! Didn't even need to offer you sweets.

Jessica retweeted that. Possibly the most productive thing she's done in her 29 years.

Is it relevant that Jessica is American? Alabama no less!