Twitter: Web 2.0's equivalent of road rage

Twitter is kind of like the modern Web 2.0 equivalent of road rage. Except it's also food rage, brand rage and media rage (among other types of rage-y stuff).

Last week I found some Media Rage on Twitter by one Mr Person. It went like this: "Hazel really needs to get her facts straight. Good thing nobody reads the NBR anymore, since the paywall went up. #journalismisdead #hack". Wow. Harshy times. I've been attacked plenty of times before – usually stuff like YOU FAT B*TCH and I CAN TELL YOU DRIVE A JAP IMPORT and YOUR HAIR SUX ARSE – but nothing quite compares to being called a hack. Eeeek. (Oh, caps lock effect mine, by the way. I always feel unbalanced people should be typographically represented with caps. I also added the italics to sort of give the phrases movement. You see? The phrases are sort of running at you. Disturbing, isn't it?)

I'm no longer on Twitter as myself – previous episodes of Media Rage along the same lines from one particular creative type led me to de-Twit – but I do lurk as a personable vegetable. He's an innocuous little potato sort, just shakin' around in the spud box doing regular tuber stuff and trying to get by. He's not typically the ragey sort, but he does appreciate a Lady Spud and will even trim his sprouts if he thinks he's going to get baked. Life as a potato is much easier than life as a journalist. Only, getting mashed takes on a whole other meaning.

Anyway, so I replied to Mr Person and asked him to email me so I could make a correction. He then backed down and said it was an overreaction on his part, which is nice enough I suppose, but the word "hack" is still swooping down on me in my nightmares like those fake CGI birds in Birdemic: Shock and Terror. I've invited him to share his opposing viewpoint, but to no avail, and I’m horribly curious about what he thought was wrong or what he really thinks. It’s keeping me awake at night. (The neighbours’ outside light is also keeping me awake. Hello, number six? Sooooo inconsiderate.)

It all reminds me a lot of road rage. Behind the wheel of the car, you're in your own little bubble. You'll scream and shout and swear and perform all manner of contortions so that your target can witness the rude hand gestures you are forming with your fingers, and your frantic frothing and gurning. But if you actually had to get out of the car and confront them face-to-face as a Real Live Human Being, your behaviour would likely change wildly. (I don't know about anyone else, but I find it's much safer just to abuse people in your head, and you can use any sort of filthy language while you do so. Just a tip.)

It's much the same on Twitter. There's a lot of Ragey Stuff going on, a lot of hating and bad comments, because it's an indirect form of address. It makes me distinctly uncomfortable.

There's Food Rage, where you tweet madly about the bad restaurant you just went to with the Really Awful Service and how even though the waitress had Nice Norks it just wasn't enough to save it from your Wholly Bad Twit-Review and take that! In your face, restaurant! 140 characters of invective and bile. So much spleen, Baudelaire would be proud.

Or there's Brand Rage, where you get superextraangrydocious at the piece of fluff you just found caked into your peanut slab, or the toothbrush that's missing a line of bristles. Which is kind of fair enough, because nobody likes fluff in their peanut slab and what the devil are you going to do with half a toothbrush? Only brush the teeth you actually like?

(Both of those have happened to me, but it was back in the pre-Twitter days – wot! as if there ever were such a thing – so I just ate around the fluff and chucked the toothbrush out. There was no rage, no pain, no suffering. No Web 2.0.)

And Media Rage, as we've seen above, is where you go nutbuckets on a particular media outlet that's twisting your knix.

It's all too easy when you're faced with a white box waiting for you to fill in your words and you've been hard done by. But when you're confronted with the real thing, a Real Live Human Being, suddenly it all comes home that you're dealing with something with feelings. Cut it and it will bleed. Twitter should come with a health warning: May contain traces of real people.