Peace to all,
Chris

My first reaction was to burst into tears. Then I considered sending an equally cutting response. Next I re-read the email I sent, to see if it could have been mis-interpreted. Finally, I did what you’ve done and wrote a blog post about what I went through, which I’ll publish tomorrow – and that made me cry more. But when bad things happen, sometimes it’s good to cry. I just talked about what I’d gone through, I’m not sure if I’ll mention the email I received. Like you – I wouldn’t mention the name of the person who sent it.

I guess this is another advantage to blogging. Instead of jumping in too soon when folk upset us and making a hash of things, blogging gets you used to really thinking about a situation – and it’s also good therapy.

Also, I guess we’ve got to remember that when folk say mean things about it, it’s not often about us – it’s usually about something they’re going through themselves and they don’t necessarily mean to be hurtful.

Some time some persons make or gide them self by what they feel at the moment and dont think on what there are reallys aying ithink thats what happend.

Thab you for the pots.

It’s great that you were able to look at their criticism and decide whether it was valid or not, most people would just write it off completely or even worse… argue with the people making the criticism instead of trying to have a conversation.

That was it, and I forgot all about it. Many months later, lo and behold I get an email from this singer herself asking me why I wrote this nasty tweet about her. I was shocked and embarrassed. Apparently she’s not even a Twitter user but her husband had been doing random searches on Twitter, searched for her name and found my tweet from many months back.

It was an awkward moment to say the least! I ended up explaining to her the situation, told her that was my websites name and had been registered to me for a long time, and when I found her using it on her site it didn’t make sense and upset me… so I tweeted about it. She in turn had felt upset and offended to find this random tweet from a stranger asking “who the hell” she was, and she said she would have rather I’d just written to her in the first place to express my concern, and that she would have gladly changed the name to avoid further confusion. We worked it out eventually, I apologized for tweeting without thinking about the repercussions, and she was kind enough to change the name on her site.

While this is different from the situation you experienced watching people talk about you in real time, it’s a similar example showing how what you say on Twitter now without giving it much thought can definitely come back to haunt you later on. It’s certainly made me more considerate about what I say about other people and it’s taught me to stop and think things through better before I go and unleash upon the Twitterverse. I still say whatever the hell I feel like, but I still stop to think about what might come back to me later on when I do.

A great question Darren, and yet part of the issue is that all the scenarios you described are not the actuality of the situation. This conversation happened in the ‘Twitterverse’ (for want of a better description), which is just as ‘real’ as other conversations, but with different rules. That’s part of why there are so many articles and comments being made lately about the nature of conversations in the Tverse – the users and tweeters are working out the rules.

I come to Twitter to have fun, and usually try to keep my negative moods or attitudes to myself, so to have such a vicious attack from a follower really hurt. People need to consider the time and care that others put into their network. It would seem that this unhappy employee got what was coming to him, which I must admit, really tickled me to see this business jump to and reprimand one of their own so sternly, publicly (albeit anonymously).

I’d like to think that it was the talk of the office for at least one evening.

I wish I’d seen the twittersation (huh?) as I would have like to point out that I always find your tweets to be useful, informative, timely and worth reading. Thanks, Darren!