#oneaday, Day 327: LOOK AT MY FACE.

There are people out there who are paid frankly obscene amounts of money to develop a company or brand's "social media strategy". This is a position that wouldn't have existed five years ago, yet now it's the new hotness. If you've got anything to do with marketing, social media is where it's at.

These "gurus" have come up with their own set of arbitrary rules about what "works" and what doesn't. Supposedly, following their bible of social media norms helps you to get hits and be more influential online. Perhaps they're true. But some of them strike me as a little odd.

Take the way social media news website Mashable presents itself on Twitter, for example. Actually, first of all look at Mashable itself. Not the most personality-filled site at first glance, is it? Sure, the personalities come out in the writing, but at first glance it looks like just any other tech news site.

So then, take a peep at Mashable's Twitter account. Notice anything odd?

Right. Despite obviously being the official account for Mashable the site, and posting little more than links to their articles with little to no interaction with their millions of followers, they have taken the inexplicable decision to present the site not as a site, but as the face and name of CEO and founder Pete Cashmore. Thus, when something from Mashable comes up in your Twitter timeline, depending on how you've got it set up, it looks like these links are being posted by a person, not by an automated RSS-to-Twitter doobriewotsit. But they're not. Unless there's a very bored intern at Mashable in charge of doing that.

Now, the theory behind this is that putting a human face on a Twitter account makes it inherently more "trustworthy". As anyone who's used Twitter before will know, bots are a pain in the arse and should be killed with fire, but it's usually reasonably obvious that they are bots. There's the odd exception, but for the most part, it's very clear.

So, with that in mind, isn't it actually rather more dishonest to post automated updates from a website pretending to be an individual person? I honestly can't understand the logic behind it. I'm sure some social media guru out there will be able to educate me. But I know that generally speaking, if I'm looking out for an update from a particular website in my Twitter timeline, I'll be looking out for that website's logo, not some bearded guy with a slight sneer.

Unless Pete Cashmore thinks he genuinely is the logo for Mashable, in which case the website should replace its header with a GIANT PICTURE OF HIS FACE. Possibly with a big flashing logo saying "OBEY".

Maybe.

#oneaday, Day 322: Chinese Whispers

Goodness me. Thank you to everyone who read yesterday's post, including the unprecedented 602 of you who showed up today. Whether or not you agreed with the sentiments therein (and whether or not you were polite about it), thanks for reading.

There have been some interesting developments in the whole thing over the last 24 hours or so. On the whole, the whole thing can actually be said to have had a positive outcome, though not quite through the means the originators of the meme intended.

In fact, the originators of the meme had nothing to do with the NSPCC, as predicted. Fellow blogger, Commodore 64 enthusiast and all-round fine, upstanding gentleman Glen McNamee did a bit of research on the issue and uncovered the fact that the whole thing had actually originated in two separate places in November as a bit of fun, with no charity links whatsoever. Read Glen's blog post about it here.

Dave Gorman also wrote an excellent post on how this sort of thing can undermine genuine fundraising attempts with honourable intentions. Also worth a read.

The interesting thing about all this, though, is the whole "Chinese Whispers" nature of it. By looking at people who had changed their avatar/status throughout the course of the day, you could see the gradual evolution of the whole thing. To start with, it was a "campaign to end child abuse". Then it was a "campaign by the NSPCC to end child abuse". And by the time people like me had written posts on the topic pointing out the flaws in the whole plan, people were taking great pains to explain that as well as changing their avatar, they had, in fact, donated, too. There were also a few people who were up-front about the whole thing and said they changed their avatar purely because they thought the cartoon characters were cool. Fair play to both parties; at least you're being honest. There was also a considerable proportion of people around Facebook who tried to convince everyone that the whole thing was a scam by a bunch of paedophiles aiming to lure children in with cartoon avatars. This last part is bollocks, by the way, in case you were worried.

So on the whole, the whole thing had a positive outcome. It provoked discussion (or rather, argument) and had the net result of shaming at least a few people into tossing a few quid the NSPCC's way, which I'm sure they're very grateful for, though they probably wouldn't have chosen to go about promoting it by people yelling at one another.

The thing is, though, couldn't the whole thing have been resolved without the need for drawn-out arguments in the middle of it? Probably. It's ironic; Web 2.0 is full of narcissism and vanity, but is also a breeding ground for sheep mentality. Some people copy and paste things or blindly follow instructions without considering the implications. Think before you post!

Let's leave it at that. The matter's over and done with. Resolved. Until everyone forgets about it and it happens all over again. When that does happen, just remember that famous and rather offensive comment about arguments on the Internet and the Paralympics.

Also, don't be a dick.

#oneaday, Day 308: Google Is Your Middleman Preventing Effective Communication

Ladies and gentlemen, we are afflicted with a plague of the Information Age. The plague of "Google/the search bar is your friend". A plague of laziness, if you will, as this is a catch-all response which makes it look like you're being vaguely helpful and/or knowledgeable when in fact all you're doing is being an arrogant asshole and trying to get out of answering a question as quickly as possible.

Google is wonderful, of course. It is generally possible to find the information you're looking for quite quickly, especially if you're familiar with some of those handy tips and tricks on how to phrase your search query. But sometimes—just sometimes—you want a human response to a question. So you ask people. You might ask them on a forum. You might ask them on Twitter. You might email someone and ask about it.

If you receive one of these emails/tweets/forum posts and instinctively go for the "insert 'Google is your friend' template", I have one request.

Stop it.

Sometimes when someone is asking a question, they don't just want an answer. They want to open a discussion. They want to find out who knows things so they can get a better understanding of that person or the community. They might be new to the community and unaware that the question has been asked before. Or they might—get this—have already tried Googling it, been confronted with "about 7,190,000 results" in "0.23 seconds" ("how to change a lightbulb", for the curious) and been understandably intimidated, or unsure which one of the often-conflicting pages to believe.

Okay, "how to change a lightbulb" is perhaps a bad example as there aren't many pages out there that helpfully inform you that the best way to change a lightbulb is to stick it up your arse and then attempt to fart it into the socket. But take a question about, say, philosophy or a political perspective. Tons of pages out there are biased one way or another, and as such it might not be clear which one is the "correct" perspective. True, asking a person the same question is also open to bias. But at least when you're dealing with a person, you have the opportunity to question their point of view and for them to justify it.

Actually, instructional "how-to" guides aren't such a bad example. Let's say you have a non-standard light fitting, as I did in the bathroom of my old flat. I was unable to work out how to remove the cover for it as I didn't know what the fitting was called. I posted a photo online and people gave some suggestions. Eventually, I levered it off with the help of a stepladder and a teaspoon. I now consider myself adequately qualified to be able to help someone else in the same position, because surely I can't have been the only person in the world with a light fitting like that. So if anyone asks me about it, I'm not going to ram their face into Google, which they've probably already done. I'm going to give them an answer, even if said answer is readily available elsewhere on the Internet.

If you're a "Google is your friend"-er, then try taking just an extra minute or two out of your undoubtedly busy schedule to help someone out. You might find they appreciate it, rather than getting arsey about you sounding like a big know-it-all. So stop hiding behind Google and help a brotha/sista out. You might learn something, too.

#oneaday, Day 307: Wait. Terry Wait. Overwait. Call The Wait-er.

How much time do you think you waste every year waiting for things to happen? Whether it's waiting for the phone to ring, the response to an email, the answer to a question, an alarm to go off, someone to call you into their office or for your delicious improvised curry sauce to thicken, chances are you spend a good proportion of your time waiting for things to happen or for other people to do things.

Just think how much more we could all get done without all this waiting. Consider how long it takes someone from any Government agency to write back to you, drawing out what is usually an unpleasant process (why else would you be writing to an arm of the Government, were it not to complain about something?) even longer than necessary. Perhaps your question was a simple one that can be answered with one word—the words "yes" and "no" were invented for exactly this situation—but no. More often than not you'll receive a letter back informing you that they're "unable to action your correspondence" or, in English, "not able to reply to your letter" and demanding further details that you've already given them at least fifteen times.

This sort of thing is annoying and, in this age of instant communication, bordering on inexcusable. Who writes letters any more, anyway, for starters? Wake up and smell the electronics.

The trouble with taking this attitude, though, is that it starts to filter into other parts of your life. You find yourself wondering why the text message you sent thirty seconds ago hasn't been replied to yet, without thinking that the recipient may just have better things to do than respond to a message that simply says "COCK! PISS! PARTRIDGE!" because they might, in fact, have a job to do. You forget the context of a reply on Twitter because someone replied to something you posted four hours ago. And in the meantime, you sit staring at your computer screen, iPhone or, in the worst possible scenarios, your wall or ceiling. Because you might get that response you need in the next thirty seconds/minute/half an hour/hour/day and you couldn't possibly do anything useful in the meantime. But of course you can't send another message following it up because that's pushy and rude and you don't want to look like an asshole.

Well, bollocks to it. We need an inversion of this situation, where "important" things get resolved quickly rather than are "endeavoured to be responded to within 72 hours", and where it's okay for your friends, family and/or that hottie you texted to be quiet for a few seconds/minutes/hours/days at a time. Because let's face it, staring at a wall is marginally less productive than staring at a toaster waiting for it to pop.

Because at least if you stare at a toaster, you end up with some delicious toast. What's your wall ever going to give you?

#oneaday, Day 305: My Content! No, MY Content!

I was watching a programme called It's Only A Theory the other night. It's an entertaining and thought-provoking show hosted by Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter in which they bring on a series of experts, get them to argue the case for their theory then make an arbitrary ruling on whether to accept or reject it.

The episode I watched featured a guy with terrible posture who was convinced that "user generated media is killing our culture and economy". You can watch the episode from this point here if you're in the UK.

The gist of the guy's argument was that the sheer amount of user-generated content out… there (here?) on the Internet is killing established cultural phenomena, partly because of the "culture of free" that there is on the Internet. Why pay for stuff when you can get it for free?

He also argued that the predilection for misinformation and relative lack of censorship on the Internet meant that overtly biased material could easily make its way out into the wild and people assume it's fact.

Take this video:

Despite it clearly being dubbed with someone pretending to hiccup and fart, it was all over the Internet yesterday, accompanied by hyperbolic language ("I literally couldn't stop watching") and more exclamation marks than your mother uses when writing an email.

It is kind of funny, fake or not, but that's beside the point.

There was an interesting twist in the ever-running battle of "who invented [annoying meme x]" recently as Rage Guy found himself at the centre of controversy. According to Internet wisdom, a meme is apparently officially "over" as soon as Hot Topic make a T-shirt of it. Because once people in the street start going "FFFFFFUUUUUUU-" to each other, what hope is there?

4chan decided not to take this insult lying down, despite having milked the concept beyond dry for the last two years. Yesterday, this post appeared on Hot Topic's Facebook page:

Someone had "tipped off" Hot Topic that "Rage Guy" was actually a racist comic featuring a guy called "Race Guy" and promptly set about creating a lengthy back catalogue of racist comics. Hot Topic, as a company in the public eye, did the only thing that they could do in the situation—withdrew the stock.

This being the Internet, though, they were of course informed of the prank within a matter of hours and a short while later, this post appeared:

As mildly amusing as all this was, it goes some distance to showing that user-generated media is probably never going to topple properly-produced, accredited and protected media. Both will undoubtedly exist side by side. But while the children of the Internet fight over what is "theirs", play childish pranks on each other, throw their toys out of their respective prams and call each other "faggots", the professionals will continue doing their thing, the same as they've always done, and be paid accordingly. Those with nothing better to do will tear each others' eyes out over who came up with the concept of producing shitty comics in MS Paint first.

You wouldn't catch the BBC World Service trolling Hot Topic.

#oneaday, Day 303: Panic Stations

Human beings, and especially British human beings, are inclined to panic at the most ridiculous things. It's probably a side-effect of being bombarded with negativity from the media and the news—if something bad could happen, then it probably already has, they tell us. (Maybe. I'm making that up a bit.)

But really, there's no need to concern yourselves with these things that might actually kill you. Seriously. Allow me to set your mind at rest for a few of these things that typically induce enormous amounts of panic.

The kettle isn't turning off!

The kettle is boiling and it hasn't made that familiar, comforting "click" of turning itself off, you say? Well, isn't that a pickle? Still, it's unlikely that your kettle will detonate like a bomb if you don't turn it off manually. In actual fact, it probably will turn itself off after a moment if you just leave it. Or if you're really that concerned, you can prevent inadvertent kettle detonation by simply turning it off yourself. You'll find it will stop boiling pretty quickly.

The toilet won't flush, and it's not my toilet!

Oh no! You did your business and now you can't get it to vacate the premises. How embarrassing! Because no-one else ever has a poo, right? You are literally the first person to ever have a poo in someone else's toilet. And explaining this situation to your hosts will be mortifying.

Never fear. In actual fact, your hosts have probably deduced the fact you were having a poo from the fact that you've been in there for more than the few seconds a wee normally takes. Also, you took a magazine and/or your iPhone/Nintendo DS with you. Simply explain to them that their toilet doesn't appear to be flushing and is there a special trick to it? Chances are if they live with an idiosyncratic toilet, they know how to talk to the toilet pixies and make it do the thing it's supposed to do.

Someone said a mean thing on the Internet!

You made a valid argument on a subject you feel passionately about, and someone called you a douchebag, whilst not contributing to the discussion at all. There's a simple solution to this problem: picturing the person who called you a douchebag. They're probably not a ripped jock with a six-pack who has a bevy of beautiful women satisfying his every sexual need at all times. He's probably an overweight gentleman with personal hygiene issues and a taste for Cheetos or similar snack foods.

This electrical device that was perfectly fine yesterday isn't working!

Rather than assuming that it's "broken" and wailing to the heavens, why not try checking the things that everyone forgets to check? Is it turned on? Plugged in? Is the socket working? Does it need new batteries? Does it need batteries at all?

On the off-chance that it is, in fact, "broken", consider what your life was like before you had the device in question. Was it significantly worse? If yes, then go get it repaired or buy a new one. If no, then you can probably live without your smoothie-maker/light-up dildo/automatic toilet paper dispenser.

I disagree with your opinion!

It's okay. Really. That's why it's called an "opinion". Well, it might not technically be the reason that the word "opinion" was chosen. But you are perfectly entitled to have your own opinion on something, and to be able to voice that opinion. You should also be prepared to deal with any consequences for voicing that opinion. If you slag off Call of Duty: Black Ops on the biggest Call of Duty fan site in the world, you're probably going to get called a douchebag by someone. If you stand naked in the middle of the street yelling "I AM A NAZI!" you will probably get arrested. If you tweet "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!!" then you will probably get prosecuted.

This online service which I don't pay anything for isn't working!

Twitter down? Facebook failing? Reddit "under heavy load"? GO OUTSIDE.

No further questions, y'honor.

#oneaday, Day 302: Faceache

So, apparently Facebook are launching their own email service. Here's a writeup on it from the very lovely Keri Honea. Go read it and support her work. Then come back. I'll wait. I'll even stay open in this tab while you go and read it.

Okay. Here's the thing. Facebook is so prevalent in modern online life, so splattered all over pretty much everything we do on the Internet, that setting up an email service probably makes sense for them. After all, there's a bunch of people who already spend a considerable amount of time on the site each day, and not all of them play Farmville, even. So why not incorporate their email into it, too?

Now, granted, few of us have had the chance to test out the new features yet. And there are a few neat ideas in there, like the filtering options, which are apparently pretty cool. But the thing that will give some people—particularly the more net-savvy amongst us—pause is Facebook's rapidly-eroding reputation for personal privacy violations.

There are all sorts of responses to this. No, you shouldn't post things on there that you're not happy to share with the world—just like any website. But you don't always have complete control over everything you appear in. The tagging process, while cool in principle, is open to all sorts of abuse and has been the source of many arguments I've heard in the street. This is something which wouldn't have happened five years ago.

And then there's the controversy over exactly how "personal" your personal information remains, even with all your privacy settings jacked up to the max. Sure, you may be able to lock off your wall, photos, messages and all manner of other things from prying eyes. Everyone, that is, except for advertisers. Those supposedly "targeted" ads on Facebook that get everywhere—what will happen once email, an inherently more private form of communication, enters the picture? Will we start seeing targeted ads on Facebook based on your emails?

Yeah, GMail does this already. But at least GMail's ads are non-obtrusive, limiting themselves to simple text links that are at least relevant to the message you're reading at the time. But imagine, just hypothetically speaking of course, that you sign yourself up to a particular kind of site that you don't really want to talk to other people about. It could be a dating site. It could be a porn site. It could be a forum specialising in some sort of obscure fetish which only you and a gentleman from Bulgaria frequent. But the advertisers spot this, and so the ad campaigns begin.

This isn't a problem until you decide to show someone who's popped over for coffee this hilarious new link you posted earlier today. You click over onto your profile and BOOM! Ads for tortoise porn. Or something.

Okay, it's a bit of a kneejerk reaction, of course, and Facebook themselves claim that they're not intending to be a competitor to the big boys of the webmail arena. But given the huge number of Facebook subscribers, it's not unreasonable to assume that a goodly proportion of those people will happily opt-in without checking the terms and conditions thoroughly. Which, as many people have been finding out, is becoming more and more important to do.

I remember joining Facebook a good few years back. It was a relatively small community that was kept private to your close group of specifically-allowed friends. It was a good place to post photos and private-ish messages, and a complete contrast to the other big-hitter at the time, MySpace. Nowadays, though? Facebook is something of a running joke to long-standing users of the Internet, many of whom have either switched completely to Twitter, or only use Facebook when dealing with people who don't understand Twitter.

Trends change over time, and it's possible that Facebook will eventually fall from grace completely when the next Greatest Thing Ever comes along. What will happen to those petabytes of data they're storing about everyone then? Including, now, super-private emails? You can guarantee that not everyone will remember to delete their accounts and remove any incriminating "evidence" from there.

Simple solution: scale back on your Facebook use and find alternatives. I barely use Facebook these days. I'm a Twitter man primarily, and am slowly creeping around to using GMail as my email client of choice. Can't argue with perfection.

In short: if you email me anything @facebook.com, I probably won't be reading it, because I'll assume anything that comes to that address will be something to do with Farmville. I am yet to hear anyone in my group of friends say something positive about the prospect of having a Facebook email address. Why not be the first? Convince me why it's a good idea in the comments!

Or, you know, don't. Your choice, really.

Free bonus: What Your Email Address Says About You, from The Oatmeal

#oneaday, Day 301: I've Read It

I've been on Reddit before. I didn't find it terribly intuitive, and the sheer volume of information on it was daunting and offputting. Sure, I helped support friends' submissions when I could, but delving into the whole thing proper just seemed like a frankly terrifying prospect.

However, yesterday, I felt differently. Spurred on by this article, which several people had posted to Twitter seemingly independently of one another, I decided to give the community another look. I decided to just dive in and start looking at things, rather than getting analysis paralysis whilst looking at the front page.

And that, seemingly, is the way to do it. There is so much content on Reddit that it is impossible (and probably undesirable) to read it all. So you pick and choose the things that you're interested in.

Now, I know that there are several people amongst those who follow me who are still utterly bewildered as to what Reddit is and what its appeal is. So, with apologies to those of you who are already well familiar with what Reddit is and how it works, here is, erm, what Reddit appears to be and how it appears to work, after a mighty one day's experience of use.

Perhaps the easiest way of thinking about it is that it's the world's biggest forum. Users can post things, which are either links to other sites or "self posts", which are simple messages. Attached to each post are two things: upvote and downvote buttons, and a comment facility. Upvoting or downvoting something promotes or demotes the content, making it more likely to rise to the top of the page (or not, as the case may be). And then the comments underneath are threaded, just like on most blogs these days.

It's in these comment sections that the excellence of Reddit shows itself, though. A far cry from your average YouTube commenter ("u suck!!!!! lol!"), Reddit contributors and commenters appear to be, for the most part, mature, articulate, literate individuals with fantastic senses of humour and some of the quickest punning minds I've ever come across. It's a community that, after lurking for a few days, I certainly wanted to be a part of. Discussion is (from what I've seen so far, at least) mature, thought-provoking but not afraid to lapse into a bit of silliness from time to time.

And diverse. Good God, Reddit is diverse. If you have a particular niche interest, you can pretty much guarantee there will be a "subreddit" for it. Whether you're into gaming, gardening, FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU- comics, porn, music, Uzbekistani sledgehammer dancing… chances are you will find someone there with the same freaky tastes as you. And for those embarrassing questions that you really want to ask people, the creation of "throwaway" sock puppet accounts is actively encouraged to help everyone feel comfortable enough to say what they feel. Many Redditors use their main accounts, though, as the atmosphere of help and support in the appropriate subreddits is, at times, a shining example of what the Internet can be.

A poster I read earlier described Reddit as 4chan 3 days late with a filter for all the disgusting, gross and/or illegal crap. Which isn't exactly high praise, but I can see their point. 4chan, love it or hate it, originates (or at least popularises) many of the words, phrases and memes we take for granted on the Internet today. But then those who are too scared to delve into the murky waters of 4chan (like me… I'm not ashamed) can come across this stuff without unwittingly stumbling into gore porn via Reddit. Everyone's a winner.

Oh, just one tip, though… if you're not interested in seeing a wide selection of user peens (interspersed with a few boobies) then just steer clear of /r/gonewild.

#oneaday, Day 299: The Internet Hits Me... But It Loves Me

The Internet is, as I've said a number of times on this blog, a fabulous invention. I certainly wouldn't be without it and the friends I've found because of it, the things I've learned from it, and all manner of other good stuff.

Paul Chambers, he of the #TwitterJokeTrial, certainly wouldn't be without it either. Because today has been a pretty remarkable demonstration of solidarity and support for him, with huge proportions of Twitter reposting his original "menacing" tweet in full, coupled with the hashtag "#IAmSpartacus". The story even made The Guardian earlier. The principle behind the thing, if you haven't worked it out for yourself anyway, is that if everyone was posting the exact same thing that Chambers posted and was not, in fact, getting arrested for it, then clearly his conviction and the failure of his appeal is utter nonsense.

And so far, there have been no reports of anyone getting a friendly knock on the door from their local bobby. Which is good.

It was actually quite heartwarming to see Twitter—a community of, essentially, strangers—coming together to show an enormous amount of unified support for someone who is still technically a stranger to most of us. The vast majority of people posting the #IAmSpartacus tweets don't know Chambers personally. But they understand what his plight represents—a pretty serious threat to not only free speech, but the British sense of humour as well. Whatever will be the eventual conclusion to the whole fiasco is still shrouded in mystery. But in the meantime, Chambers is doubtless sleeping a little easier at night knowing that to many people, he's a hero of sorts.

So that's all very nice, and one of many examples of how The Internet is clearly a Force for Good. (Of course, some might, at this stage, point out that if there was no Internet Chambers wouldn't have got into this situation in the first place, but let's just leave that argument to one side for a moment, shall we?)

And then we get this:

Source

Good old 4Chan, cesspool of the Internet, originator of some of the funniest and/or most irritating (depending on your outlook) memes to do the rounds on the Web. There they are, genuinely proposing to flood Tumblr with gore, porn, child pornography and "the worst [they] can offer", which probably means "all of the above".

Now granted, Tumblr is a bit of a hipster hangout that is full of people who do nothing but post pretentious photographs, "inspirational" quotes and tame pornography. But there are also plenty of people out there who use it as their blogging platform of choice. With good reason—it's a simple system for sharing text, photos, video and audio that is mobile-friendly. There's no extraneous features or plugins to worry about, it's just type, post, go. Couple that with the built-in community features and, to some, it's like an extended Twitter with no character limits. Not just for hipsters, see.

Whether 4Chan will actually go through with their threat or not is kind of beside the point. The fact that the possibility of such a campaign was even considered is the thing which makes me want to invest in an expansive hammer collection. According to Urlesque, earlier today there wasn't a huge amount of traction for the plan. Which is kind of encouraging, I guess, but it still sucks that there are a bunch of a-holes out there who feel the need to wave their e-peen around at every opportunity.

Whoever came up with the campaign seems genuinely affronted that Tumblr, as a community, is trying to "imitate" 4Chan. Now, there are many things to aspire to in life. But to aspire to being 4Chan is not something that most people would say with pride. And it's pretty likely that a considerable proportion of Tumblr's users aren't even aware of what 4Chan is in the first place. So the particular "Anonymous" who has his (you know it's a "he", and likely a "he" who has never known the touch of a woman/man, depending on preference) panties in a bunch over Tumblr's "imitation" of 4Chan is clearly just looking for an excuse to wipe his dick on everybody's curtains.

Still, as ever, it comes back to the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, which I've posted links to on this blog more times than I care to remember. I guess once more can't hurt.

Basically, Internet, you're capable of showing the very best and/or worst the human race has to offer at a moment's notice. So it should hopefully go without saying by now that the words you should live your life by are very simple: always follow Wheaton's Law.

Don't be a dick.

#oneaday, Day 298: Did You Hear The One About The [REDACTED] And The #TwitterJokeTrial?

If the name Paul Chambers doesn't mean anything to you at the moment, then take a moment to read this summary of the day's proceedings, courtesy of The Guardian.

The TL;DR version (God, I hate that phrase and wish it, and everyone who uses it unironically, would die in a f… would, err, live a long and happy life filled with kittens and/or puppies, whichever they preferred, really, because it's up to them how they live their lives and I love them, whatever they decide) is this: Chambers made an (arguably) ill-advised joke on Twitter about blowing Robin Hood Airport "sky high". It was a throwaway comment that got blown (pardon) out of all proportion and, thanks to some very, very silly people, has been treated as something roughly approaching a mid-level terrorist incident.

The conclusions of the judge today were that Chambers' original comment was "obviously menacing" and that any "ordinary person" would "be alarmed".

Funny, then, that Twitter itself has been full of bomb threats, incitements to violence, discussions of inflicting bodily harm on individuals, and no-one else (save Conservative councillor for Birmingham, Gareth Compton, who made some similarly ill-advised comments, got bollocked and then promptly released on bail) has been arrested for it.

The long and short of it, though, is that Chambers' appeal was unsuccessful, meaning he is now lumbered with a mounting legal bill and fine which—bless him—Stephen Fry has offered to pay, but members of the public have been generously donating to, also. (Find out how you can help too here).

Chambers has lost his job as a result of one silly comment on Twitter that clearly wasn't intended to be "menacing" in the slightest. What sort of incompetent terrorist hatches their plans via social media anyway? Everyone knows they still use cassettes and VHS tapes. But the fact stands; this poor chap has had his life pretty much destroyed as a result of an almost total abandonment of Common Sense.

I like to think of myself as a fairly ordinary person, and I certainly wasn't menaced by Chambers' tweet. I wasn't even aware of it until this whole legal fiasco started—but I follow plenty of people who make comments which could, according to Judge Jacqueline Davies, be interpreted as "menacing" and "alarming". Are they all going to be arrested now? Or was Chambers set up to be made an example of? Certainly if the authorities are intending prosecuting everyone who has made mock "bomb threats" on Twitter today, they'd better get started now, because it's going to take a good long while, and lots of courthouse space to get it all sorted.

Or perhaps they could, you know, focus on some actual crimes. Perhaps they could take some steps to deal with kids carrying knives, youth gangs, burglaries, assaults, murders, even fucking traffic incidents carry more weight than a ridiculous comment on Twitter.

Or even—here's a thought—they could invest some resources into tracking down actual, genuine terrorists and foiling their plots before they happen. But perhaps that's too difficult, and it's much easier to make a scapegoat of a poor fella who was simply excited to spend time with the love of his life, and was frustrated by the fact that the airport's closure was making that look more and more unlikely.

So, moral of the story, kids? Be careful what you say. Otherwise Big Broth—

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