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the irish online hate wars..


From Ryan Tubridy to Dara O Briain through Brian O'Driscoll and Amanda Brunker, countless celebrities in Ireland have been victims of online haters. Pat Fitzpatrick examines how Twitter and Irish internet message boards have become a breeding ground for vicious abuse and looks at how the stars respond, from going offline, to taking on their attack


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Sunday September 04 2011
Dara O Briain was called a fat slug. Brian O'Driscoll was told to retire. Amanda Brunker took a pasting. Rosanna Davison caused a storm when she called a 'friend' horse-face.

Rory McIlroy was caught flirting. Ireland soccer star Darron Gibson deleted his Twitter account after two hours. And, of course, Ryan Tubridy signed off Twitter for good recently after months of abuse.

A growing list of Irish celebrities are coming to terms with the downside of a life lived online. Twitter, Facebook and other social media give celebs direct and immediate contact with their fanbase. It's an ideal platform to advertise their latest book, exercise DVD, designer clothing line, etc, for free. But it also opens them up to the haters.

Haters is the term given to those who fling abuse at others online. Trolling is the verb used to describe what they do. The haters love nothing better than to troll famous figures and hopefully drag them into a fight. You don't have to read too far between the lines of their bile to figure out that some of the haters have been bullied themselves.

A particular corner of online Ireland seems to have it in for Ryan Tubridy. Boards.ie, a site that hosts a variety of special-interest forums, is buzzing with Friday-night haters who reckon the best way to end the week is watching The Late Late Show with a bottle of wine and the laptop next to them on the couch.

If their negative comments on the site are anything to go by, they sound like they are sitting there in leather bondage gear, with a pool ball tied into their mouth, the remote control just out of reach, being whipped by a dominatrix in a Ryan Tubridy mask. They take incredibly perverse pleasure from watching Tubridy every Friday. The worst thing you could do to them is cancel the Late Late. Except, of course, they're masochists, so they'd probably enjoy the pain.

The people on Twitter aren't any kinder. Tubridy is a self-confessed fan of the medium, but after a particularly harsh pasting one evening he felt moved to tweet, "Twitter gets very unpleasant of a Friday night." A sample Twitter message to him in May read, "Why don't you just **** off, BBC will be doing us a service if they take you." He signed off Twitter for good in August.

Some of the Tubridy haters seem to be young-to-middle-aged left-leaning types who wish that every show on television was either a 24-episode Scandinavian crime thriller or Mad Men. They should be out on a Friday night discussing Mad Men over bottles of Belgian beer, before heading home with a stranger in cool shoes to have meaningful sex. Instead, they're sitting in watching a general-entertainment show like the Late Late and having online conversations with a bunch of strangers. They might be stuck at home because they've just had a baby, or all their friends are married, or they don't have the money to go out. Whatever the reason, it leaves them feeling old and angry. Very angry.

You need to see the casual viciousness online to believe it. The quickest way to see the haters in action is to google the c-word. You might feel seedy just typing the word, but it's obvious that people don't have to do much these days to get themselves called the c-word. The 22-year-old blogger who broke the story that finished David Norris's run for the Aras got a tweet from a students' union leader. It read, "I hope you're happy you ****."

You'll get this all over the social media; people saying things with a direct brutality you know they wouldn't use in a face-to-face situation. You can be sure that if a lot of the haters met Tubridy on a night out, they would probably ask to have their photo taken with him and sign my shirt there while you're at it.

Psychologists call it the online disinhibition effect. The first experience people had of this was in the growth of online technical forums during the Nineties. If you were having a problem with your computer, rather than calling technical support, you could post a question on the relevant forum. Along with some helpful suggestions, you'd usually get a random stranger or two calling you a complete effing moron for asking such a dumb question. Even though you suspected that it was coming from some bitter loner who wouldn't look you in the eye in real life, it was still shocking when it first happened.

The reasons for this disinhibition are fairly simple. You don't know who I am. You can't punch me. Even if I get barred from the site or you block me on Twitter, I can get a new username in 30 seconds and carry on trolling. Not that people launching an attack always need to be anonymous.

Last year, Rosanna Davison hit out on Twitter and Facebook at an unnamed friend she described as 'horse-face', whom she claimed was spreading lies about her. The tabloids dubbed it NeighGate. Paddy Power opened a book on who she was calling horse-face. Rosanna had made her point.

Irish Sunday Mirror editor and infamous celebrity journalist Paul Martin has taken a share of abuse. "There are nameless and faceless people out there libelling me and others, in some cases setting up accounts with a fake username," he says. "I know who some of them are, but there's no point in going to court because these people have no assets, they've nothing to lose. OK, these people have a small audience, but the comments still come up if you google my name. So I retweet the messages and at least let the people following me on Twitter see what's going on."

Retweet is the way things explode on Twitter. As it was, only Martin could see the message. But when he clicked the retweet button, the message became visible to all his followers -- it would be like if you got a text message and decided to forward it to every contact in your phone book.

Brian O'Driscoll used retweet recently to confront a critic. Frustrated after Ireland's performance against Scotland in the Six Nations (even though they won), rugby fan Cathal Reilly tweeted O'Driscoll with, "Great game today!! Time to retire while we still have good memories of how good you were many years ago. Go gracefully." O'Driscoll retweeted the message.

Whatever the Irish captain's intentions, the effect was to unleash the hounds. Within a couple of minutes Reilly was feeling the heat from O'Driscoll's fans, with one tweeter calling him a dick and asking: "Who the **** do you think you are to question these guys?" Another told him to, "Shut the **** up....u twat......What you have done at the highest level? talk bollox, perhaps? idiot."

A similar thing happened to a Twitter user called Deilginis. In a tweet where he decided to tell Brian O'Driscoll that his "trophy wife" was looking good, he added in "better than your slug of a wife you fat slug," and sent it to comedian Dara O Briain. Another Deilginis tweet around that time was to tell Chris Brown to stop beating up Rihanna, so it's fair to say he was looking for attention. Still though, slug?

O Briain, understandably, tweeted back "You might not have meant it. But you owe an apology to my wife, who you've never met and called a slug." He also retweeted the original message. The hounds didn't need to be asked twice. One of the milder tweets sent to Deilginis read, "Wow what an utter bellend you are. Sitting in Dalkey with your silver spoon in your mouth. Gob****e."

Deilginis started to backtrack, eventually apologising to O Briain and even offering to pay money to charity to patch it up. The comedian wrapped it all up with, "All apologies accepted, happiness and mutual respect reigns, @deilginis retires from a brief trolling career. A good result all round." Deilginis has since removed his account and could warn others against dissing a famous celeb with loyal followers.

Not that they'll listen. More and more of us seem to be drifting off into the internet. People don't go to the pubs that much anymore. Even when we do, it's not unusual to see a group sitting around a table of pints in silence, staring at their smartphones. Kids everywhere seem freakishly glued to their computer games. Instead of getting a few 'school of hard-knock' lessons on how to behave out on the green -- where you get a dead arm and a kick in the arse for shouting around the c-word -- they kill dragons or aliens in a virtual world with no consequences.

It's not just the kids. The marriage counselling service, Accord, recently reported a surge in couples coming to them looking for help because one partner has virtually disappeared on to the internet. A lot of Irish adults, particularly men, find themselves killing Nazis on a games console at 3am and wonder where the time went. It's hardly surprising that some people decide to log into Twitter before they go to bed in order to tell their least favourite celeb that he's a c-word. It's like killing Nazis, but better.

And, of course, there's a sense of equality on something like Twitter. In the past, the stars only talked to us through The Late Late Show or some other celebrity interview. It was a bit like the Catholic church, where any conversation with God had to be mediated by a priest. But the new social media is a very Protestant affair, where you can have a one to one with anybody who opens an account. And if you call them the c-word and they block you, then just open another account and continue on your nice chat.

Some stars beat a quick retreat. Irish soccer midfielder Darron Gibson logged off Twitter after two hours to get away from tweets such as, "You are an abysmal excuse for a footballer. You're a one trick pony -- a **** one at that," and, "your ****ing awful, get out of the club". If you think that guy shouting abuse at you from Row G of the stand is toxic, wait until you see him on Twitter. Fans who previously had to wait until the weekend match to let off steam because their boss gave them grief, can now just log in and tell some twentysomething millionaire that he's a bag of ****e.

Not everybody runs away. Amanda Brunker faced the haters when it was announced that she would replace Jesse J at this year's Oxegen. She was quickly christened Hitless Brunker and took a lot of flak for filling a slot that could have showcased a promising young band.

"Why do u honestly believe that u deserve a place at Oxygen?? you probably sing as bad as u look... I will laugh out loud," was a mild example. Brunker retweeted the messages and the word started to spread. It wasn't long before she was trending on Twitter in Dublin, which is Twitter-speak for everybody is talking about you. It seemed to take its toll at times like when she tweeted, "OK haters, you've got the better of me. I'm gonna bring my sons 4 pizza... I am officially deflated. Thanks to all for ruining my happy buzz." And she showed further strain with, "Hubby says I'm to ignore all the haters & as much as he hates violence he'll bash anyone who throws bricks at me. OK?"

She fought back, though, telling her followers, "Ahhh, just got a call of support from my good pal @gavinfriday -- feeling more ready to take on the battle now " She might not have had an army of attack dogs to call on like Brian O'Driscoll or Dara O Briain, but there's always Gavin Friday.

The result? Amanda Brunker increased her profile on Twitter, which was presumably the point. Anybody who saw a clip of her eventual performance at the festival will know one thing -- it wasn't about the music. Hopefully.

Sile Seoige did no harm to her profile when she told us just how excited she got at a Kylie Minogue concert. "I may regret this tweet but I think I just came at the Kylie gig...seriously....that good" she told her 1,500 followers. That number rose to 7,000 after she started to trend on Twitter the next day. That's what happens when a country girl tells the world she had an orgasm in public.

And how did the haters react? Well, they didn't really. Most people made bad puns. In fact, it was TV3 and Today FM presenter Ray Foley who managed to attract the haters on this one. He had Seoige on his radio show a few days later, where he pointed a webcam at her breasts and repeatedly told his guests to "look at that". Suddenly, Foley was trending on Twitter. He was compared to the Sky Sports commentators Richard Keys and Andy Gray, who were given the sack over their Seventies-style views on women. Apparently when it comes to Twitter, girls being laddish is fine, but boys need to watch their step. The haters can be politically correct when the mood takes them.

Not to mention misogynists. A potent blend of piety, snobbery and good old-fashioned woman-hating erupted when pictures of the infamous McBarron sisters started to appear on the website showbiz.ie.

Collette McBarron made her name as a lieutenant in the Irish Army who qualified for the Miss Ireland pageant, dated boxer Kenny Egan, got in trouble for abandoning her post, and eventually left the Army. She just cropped up again recently for having an apparently platonic fling with Ashley Cole. Along with her sisters, Christina (who competed in Miss Universe Ireland) and Eimear, Colette was introduced to Irish society with photos of the three of them heading into Krystle nightclub. They wore the kinds of dresses you see on any Saturday night and in photos that look pretty tame by the standards of your average Facebook page. The one thing you could say about their endless array of dresses, hairdos and mildly suggestive poses is that the McBarrons were having a laugh. Not everybody got the joke.

They were labelled the McMunters by people leaving comments at showbiz.ie and faced comments like: "Ah jaysus it's the three billy goats gruff themselves, to what do we owe the pleasure? I'm only delighted there's a market for ye, off ye go back to Donegal so where some half-blind farmer with a penchant for goats will see to ye."

And: "god i cant bear to look at them, nightmares!!" Over at boards.ie, haters reacted with, "Head on her like a melted welly! Jesus thats rough" and "yer wan has a head on her like a bucket of smashed crabs".

The sisters came out fighting, responding to the haters directly on showbiz.ie, saying that they were jealous and should get a life. They also exhorted them to check out that weekend's LIFE magazine, where Collette and Christine were featuring in an article about wannabes: "wanabes..check out the life mag in the independent newpaper this weekend:):) hahaha!! jeoulousy is a very ugly trait!! haters!! love yall...." As you can imagine, this brought another wave of abuse.

While Green Party politicians made a lot of use of social media while they were in government, they also took a lot of the flak. Between sticking the knife into Willie O'Dea and undermining the coalition with Fianna Fail, Dan Boyle had a glorious streak last year where he virtually ran the country from his Twitter account. Paul Gogarty was only ever one update away from the news, particularly with headline-friendly tweets such as, "I don't give a **** about gutless Gilmore."

But both of them had to endure a lot of bile. Dan Boyle was the subject of an 87-page thread at the current affairs site, politics.ie. Before the last election, among some considered debate were entries like, "Dan, I know you read threads on P.ie. So read this GO HOME AND GET YOUR ****ING SHINEBOX" and "Someone should stick that phone up Dans hole." On the same site, Paul Gogarty was the subject of a 196-page thread titled, "Is Paul Gogarty actually mad?" You wouldn't describe it as positive.

After putting up with a lot of abuse on Twitter, both Greens starting blocking some of the abusers and then took a lot of flak for silencing their critics. You don't have to agree with Boyle and Gogarty to see the problem here for them and any other public figure; their children and loved ones. In the past it was possible for a public figure to get along with nothing more than a few gentle brickbats from It Says in the Papers or maybe a bit of roughing up on Scrap Saturday.

Grown-up loved ones can lash back, as Amy Huberman did recently, when 'Chriscross Jones' went on Twitter to slam Bod's performance against France at Lansdowne Road. But worse is that your child can google your name and see that there's a gang of people online who hate your guts. Is there any parent who wants that? No, but it comes with the territory.

Before it was known that he had split up with his girlfriend and childhood sweetheart, Holly Sweeney, McIlroy was linked with Danish tennis star Caroline Wozniacki and the couple exchanged a couple of flirty tweets. (Have these people not heard of text?) When another user tweeted: "Now, now. No flirting on Twitter. Time and place for these things. @HFCSween won't be happy", his ex-girlfriend came straight back with, "Bit late for that."

McIlroy's public image -- nice guy, no pretensions -- was then famously undermined by a single tweet after a round at this year's Irish Open. American TV commentator, Jay Townsend, slated McIlroy on Twitter for the way he played the course and suggested that he should fire his caddy and hire the guy who worked for Tiger Woods. Understandably enough, McIlroy felt he should defend his caddy. In the past, that might have involved a quiet word by the clubhouse or a text message. Instead, he sent a tweet to Townsend, "Shut up . . . You're a commentator and a failed golfer, your opinion means nothing!"

The news went straight around the world. A commentator on the influential Golf Channel in the US -- where McIlroy had become golf's Justin Bieber after winning the US Open -- described him as a spoilt brat who feels entitled. He also demanded the new superstar should apologise. McIlroy responded by blocking Townsend from his Twitter so he wouldn't have to hear from him anymore. So, no apology there then.

This isn't the end of McIlroy. Golf was very quick to get over the fact that Tiger Woods can't keep his pants on. But it's an example of how on a viral network like Twitter, where a couple of retweets can have the story global in no time, your reputation is at stake every time you share what's on your mind. Stars like Brian O'Driscoll, McIlroy, O Briain and others love the idea of Twitter because it allows them talk directly, and, in some cases, flog stuff, to their fans. But they need to watch out for the haters -- because you can be sure the haters are watching them.

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- Pat Fitzpatrick


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