Yeah, so…

Yeah, so I got involved in some shit involving News Ltd technology reporter Claire Connelly this evening.

It started when she decided, or was told by an editor, to pursue a story about internet trolling.

Naturally, like any lazy modern journalist reporter, she turned to Twitter and asked for trolls to get in touch with her.

As you can imagine, such a derpy question from a known numpty media person immediately got disseminated beyond her 1500(ish) followers and out into the wider Twitter community.  It took approximately 30 seconds before it was being mocked and re-written to form equally derpy or totally insane questions.

Ms Connelly didn’t like this.  Fair enough - In hindsight the tram/ejaculate/licking tweet probably wasn’t in best taste.  But hey, the internet is opt-in - if you don’t like what someone is saying you can either just not read it or there are a variety of tools available to you to block it from your view in a more rigourous manner.

To an extent, I don’t think Ms Connelly ever quite understood why it happend, she says she was “just trying to find some sources” for her story.

Here’s the thing, Ms Connelly, you didn’t need to ask.  What you needed to was (shock) your job.  If you’re interested in trolls, take a look at the #AusPol stream from there, using “judgement” you should be able to identify some trolls (link to Wikipedia to help you learn what one is before you start pointing fingers).  Once you’ve done that, you’re then able to go back through their publicly available Twitter stream where you can look at what they’re posting, maybe glean a little bit more about their personality or whether the account exists purely for the purposes of trolling.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll have a nice little base of actual information from which you can write your article.  Maybe, if you’re feeling brave, you can approach some of those who you think to be the “worst” or “most interesting” people from that group for direct comment.

Just asking Twitter to do your research for you is lazy, a cop out and deserving of being mocked.

Oh, also, Ms Connelly, this is pretty petty.  At best, you’re having a bit of a tanty because someone made fun of you for being lazy in your job.  At worst, you’re attempting to intimidate or otherwise cajole me into participating in your derp story.  Not gonna happen.

4 months ago  /  0 notes