A couple tips on how to handle Twitter bullies AND a reminder.... celebs can be bullied too.6/27/2016 For those of you who are frequent users on twitter you probably are aware it is a place where anyone can interact with anyone..... of course, assuming that person reads their @ messages. This is no more noticeable than with celebs of varying degrees. Whether its your academy award winning legends, or your up & coming youtube singer, people use twitter day in & day out to tell celebs a lot of shit.
While MOST tweets are overly positive, maybe even to the point you question the sanity of those tweeting it. There is of course SOME negative ones, and sometimes those negative ones are mean... and I DO NOT mean the level of "mean" of something like "I wish the show would kill off your character because it sucks" level of mean. I mean with purposeful intent to attack and anger a celeb or even make threats against them. I'm not even a celeb & I get a handful of them annually and I only have 11K followers. So imagine what a celeb with 500K followers must get? No more obvious of such an attack in recent memory I can recall has happened than this past few days with Once Upon A Time star Josh Dallas. At the time of writing this post, I have reported MORE THAN 40 accounts in the 2-3 days I became aware of this issue from a user somewhere in Europe that has been @ messaging Josh with harsh & negative words. The users intention is to try and bully Josh into deleting his twitter account. Ironic, considering the user claims to be a huge fan of Ginnifer Goodwin, Joshs wife, and FORMER twitter user herself who left eventually because of an unfair amount of critical tweets about her. The users unhealthy obsession with Ginny has culminated in quite literally hundreds, possibly thousands of tweets at Josh, and 1 of Joshs fans, and now another actress that I guess Josh must have recently worked with. I'm not going to repeat what this psychopath has said. Needless to say, its at best rude, at worst unhealthy and obsessive. SO FAR, twitter has (albeit kind of slow on the draw after their first few were suspended almost immediately) been on top of things, suspending the 40+ accounts so far. But the user just keeps making new ones up, often several at a time then spamming Joshs @ messages with their same lunatic ramblings. This is where twitter IS failing. The fact they didnt block access to the IP address/phone number after about the 3rd suspended account is frankly bewildering. What YOU can do is.... if you see this troll posting, DO NOT engage them. I get the feeling they dont even look back on the profiles to see what replies they got since they have made so many of them. Just go to the report section (its the wheel looking icon next to the follow/unfollow button on a desktop... on phones, the icon looks different according to brand, but its usually next to the follow/unfollow button) go in there and REPORT them, you can go for Spamming, because they absolutely are spamming. You can also go for "abusive or harmful" which will then take you to a 2nd screen with more options where you can pick "engaging in targeted harrassment" this will take you to another screen asking if its you or someone else, which then you pick someone else & finally a screen MAY (not always) come up asking you to show examples of said offenses out of a handful of tweets they seem to randomly have picked.... just click on the ones that clearly show the proof & submit your report. Thats it. You can EVEN report them for both if you want to take the extra couple seconds. But dont engage the person..... EVEN if they comment in this blog post, DO NOT engage with them....... leave that to ME. By doing so, you are going to let them feel they've gained something out of this. Lastly, to the nutjob behind this attack. You can "block" my twitter account all you want. Like you have others. Feel free. It IS your right..... just know, like you, I have multiple twitter accounts as well, all in good standing & you will never know which one reported you. Also, I truly DO hope you are coming here in August like you claimed in several posts, I hope even MORE I find out and run into you. All I will say is, someone will not enjoy their trip. Also, be absolutely sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you wont be getting a chance to interact with Ginny. Security will be well alerted to this. Below is a screen cap of all the accounts (minus 5 that twitter suspended WHILE I was in the middle of reporting them so I lost the chance to bookmark them lol) twitter has so far suspended, and those soon to be suspended.... and I AM SURE in the time I have spent writing this blog post, they probably will have added to the list. So, anyone got any suggestions on how do deal with said nuisance? Also, have you ever seen another celeb attacked by 1 person so aggressively and what eventually came of it?
2 Comments
![]() Christina Grimmie. A name that many people never knew before they woke up Saturday morning to hear about the death of this musician that was on The Voice a couple years ago. Myself included. When I first heard the news of her shooting last night I knew instantly this was not good..... and I do not mean just for the simple fact someone was shot. I meant for how/where it happened and what it could mean in the bigger picture. The Youtube developed, The Voice elevated singer was doing a meet & greet with her fans, most of whom are quite young. She was taking time out of her day, as most entertains will since they know they are in a business where pleasing the public often equates to more success. She was doing everything right. Then something terribly wrong happened. A person (I refuse to name this coward) decided, for reasons we may never know due to his suicide after the events unfolded, decided to shoot Christina several times including in the face. Marcus Grimmie, her brother instantly tackled the shooter but not before he shot himself. Thanks to social media, we pretty much know most or all of the pertinent details. We've seen 1st hand reports of how a member of Before You Exit yelled at fans to run away, worrying about their safety first, and his second. We know of course about her brothers heroics. We know most everything there is to know.... except maybe why. But this blog post isnt here to dissect why it happened. There will be plenty of places talking about that. I am going to talk about the fact that almost everyone is going to be affected by this. Some more than others. If you are currently rolling your eyes at that assumption...read on. The shooting of Christina Grimmie is unusual for a couple reasons. First, it was at a free promoted event that anyone could attend. A concert, a place MOST people would feel safe, or at worst not on guard of a potential violent threat. Even more shocking was the fact the shooting happened at a meet & greet. The idea this guy got a pair of guns & a knife into the venue is mildly shocking (I'd like to say its more shocking than that, but its the U.S..... so no, mildly is unfortunately right), the fact he got it into a meet & greet scenario, got close enough to her without any security picking up on the fact he likely was acting out of place prior is appalling. The security for this event seemed minimal to non-existent according to tweets I found HERE and HERE from 2 from attendees saying security never even checked their purses. or a tweet where a fan says security actually ran away HERE. If this is true, thats 1 of the more cowardly acts I have ever heard of. At the very least, it is quite clear security was inadequate at this event. have been to a LOT of low security events, and while I have obviously never considered "how easy would it be to....", I have wondered a few times looking at some people "what do they REALLY want here?". So far, I have never encountered anything as scary as the events of last night, but I have definitely seen celebs, and other fans intimidated/scared/uneased by the actions of people. I have had a female actress tell me personally she doesnt feel comfortable when shes 5'3 with no one else around her being approached by 2, 6'0 tall men....and that was in a VERY public place. Its not a feeling I will ever know, but I can understand that hesitance/nervousness still on some level. Celebs, especially female celebs DO wonder much more than you or I ever will about security & are they truly safe in any situation. This is where last nights events will have an impact on YOU...probably at some point. This didnt happen at Madison Square Gardens, venues like that have pretty detailed screening, it happened in a smaller venue where security is usually pretty lax by the sounds of it....especially for an audience coming to see a 22 yr old singer who is famous for being on youtube & a music competition. Right now, around the world, especially in the U.S., tens of thousands of people at varying levels of celeb status, security, management and other facets of the industry are talking with venues, hotels or their own people about safety and security.
The most obvious reaction to it, will be increase security getting in, at every point. It wont likely be JUST for 20something musicians either, accomplished long time musicians always have that concern as well, as do athletes, actors and even youtube stars, like Philip DeFranco who talked openly about how at VidCon, an event seemingly full of people similar to him, he walks around with off duty Police as security in this video posted today. Everyone will be reviewing, and very likely stepping up their security protocols in light of this tragedy.... as they should. So you, the consumer of the products will probably be inspected a bit closer before you are allowed to go see a show, a sporting event, or a convention because of the very public attack on Christina Grimmie. That little bit extra waiting around that some of you are going to selfishly feel annoyed by isnt just to annoy you, it is for the entertainers safety, as well as everyone else including YOURS. this likely will even stretch beyond the entertainment industry. Businesses with any level of wealth constantly see news stories like this and go over their own security with a fine tooth comb. Something that your workplace might implement in the following weeks or months might be because of what happened last night. I have a job where interacting with famous people is a necessity obviously. To the locals, they know who I am, they know what I will/wont do. They know how to deal with me. We essentially have a mutal toleration of each other. But when I go to a different city, a different group of people in charge of assessing threats, I'm far more understanding if someone asks me a few more questions than seems reasonable. I get the place they are coming from. So if you are at an event, and that guard asks you a question or two, remember, they are doing it to minimize possible problems for everyone. Someone might see your actions differently than you might have meant them.... dont take offense to their inquiry. If you are somewhere, and you see someone that you feel isnt acting normally, dont be scared to report it to someone either. Several times I've reported something at a set or at an airport that turned out to be nothing, but never have I thought afterwards "that was stupid, it was nothing". As for me. This is surely going to have a major impact on my business. Every time something similar to this happens, celebs, understandably, get more guarded than they were before. Sometimes those feelings disipate with time, but sometimes the celebs just go into shutdown mode & refuse to interact with anyone. My world is sure to get a lot more tougher to do my job due to this. It was after all at an autograph signing this happened. How much more relevant to my job could it be? For awhile, I will absolutely be far more patient and understanding when/if some guard asks me something or a celeb nervously tries to avoid an interaction. I'll still try, I still have particular points I will bring up to try and put them at ease, but I will also understand that hesitation. Also, I know I stated this on twitter, but I will say it here in more than 140 characters. If you have ever emailed me, or tweeted at me, or even asked me in person "where can i find so & so?" and youve wondered why I am reluctant to share that info, perhaps this tragedy makes you understand far more. I generally consider myself nicer than most of the autograph hounds you'll meet. I'm willing to help out within reason, but I am also very cautious of giving people info that I feel they shouldnt have. I have always told people "well you can find them at set, or they are doing a meet & greet here..." instead of giving them their home address or their flight schedule. It is NOT because I am trying to keep that knowledge to myself, it is because I find the venues I stated more suitable for a celeb to encounter with someone they dont really know. If youve ever had the random luck of seeing a celeb while they are out at dinner, or at an airport and seen them get found by a flock of fans, you surely know, they are not comfortable with the situation more often than not. They might still take the time to meet them, but they are far far less at ease doing it than if they were at their film set or a meet & greet event where there are some level of safeguards in place to minimize risk to them. A story I have retold 100s of times in Vancouver is of an actress who still works here telling me & another autograph hound "you guys, I have no problem with, because I know what you want... its fans I dont like, because you never know what they really want". It isnt that this woman hates her fans, its that she has a comfort level with autograph hounds she can never have with a fan, because she never knows what it is they truly want from her, where as with us, she knows. I've heard similar stories to that from others in the past as well, just the way she put it sort of summed it up best. A lot of time I see fans gripe & bitch because I met someone, and they didnt. Sometimes, theres a reason for that, and its that the entertainer prefers dealing with people they understand as opposed to a wild card. In my experiences, far more celebs than you might expect prefer dealing with someone like me compared to a random 1 off encounter with a fan. This is why I dont give out details to people that arent public. A film set, a meet & greet, those are things where there is some control for them to deal with it. Their personal time is a terrible place for fans to find them, and I wont encourage that. So that is why I likely ignored your request in the past. Lastly, & most importantly in all of this. My condolences go out to her family, especially her brother who will feel things few if any of us ever will, to her friends, and to her fans. To any of her fans that were there and had to witness this, I wish there was something to tell you to make this better but it doesnt work like that. Only time will help minimize this feeling. If you are having trouble dealing with it, talk to your friends and family. This is why they are there. Or talk to a stranger if you feel it will be easier. There are plenty of places you can call/go to have someone listen. Rest In Peace Christina Grimmie, I am sorry I had to learn who you were like this. There is a Gofundme page set up for the Grimmie family. You can find it HERE |
About this blogCanadagraphs personal blog page - rants, praise, observations and opinions. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|