Still Waters No Longer Running, Derp.

Another missive from his serious beardyness, John Waters:http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2013/0104/1224328422900.html

It harks back to an article he wrote a while back:

I finished with the following paragraph, intended as a parody of the phenomenon I had described: “Personally, I would prefer if, instead of pursuing individuals tweeters, the police arrested Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter, and closed his network down. Actually, i wish they wud burn the Twitter founder in oil leave his carcass out for the buzzards. Seriously.”

Resorting to the kind of language he complained about has backfired as it's resulted in a complaint:

Even I, who had railed against the assassination of irony perpetrated by internet discourse generally, was astonished to hear that a representative of the Twitter organisation had telephoned (yes, telephoned, and on a landline too!) my page editor at the Irish Times to complain about that final sentence. She said Twitter had seen my article and was very unhappy. The final paragraph “crossed a line”, they felt. Asked if she wasn’t able to observe some note of irony in the “buzzard” sentence, she replied: “No, I don’t see that.”

I can see a number of problems:
1. John Waters isn't known for his sense of humour, not to the general public at large, so he's more likely to be taken seriously.
2. Irony and sarcasm don't always come across clearly in written form, even on paper.
3. It's also a very old trick to make an obnoxious comment and then claim to be joking.

I suspect 1 and 2 are the factors at play here.

I'm not sure if the person who contacted the paper was from Twitter or was a concerned user.

John Waters has had a problem with a tweet:

And here’s another irony. Some weeks later, I had reason to attempt contacting Twitter to request they remove a defamatory posting timed to attack me at a late stage in November’s so-called children’s referendum. I discovered Twitter does not make available either a telephone number or address for complainants to use.

The complaints procedure is here:
https://support.twitter.com/groups/33-report-abuse-or-policy-violations/topics/122-reporting-violations/articles/20169998-how-to-report-abusive-behavior#

He then claims that the culture of online discussion has become dangerous and makes a suggestion:

In some instances, as we’ve recently had reason to observe, the effects of such commentary can be terminal. Free speech and democracy are far better served by a regulated system of commentary, which insists on basic civilities, foremost among which is that participants identify themselves before contributing.

He doesn't see that pseudonyms can help discussion by giving someone a chance to talk about something that might carry a stigma - for instance, mental health problems, in a way that won't have negative repercussions for them.

He then goes on to discuss legal issues to do with media and ISPs. I'm not as familiar as I'd like to be with the background there, so I'll leave that to one side.

robindch wrote: »

Waters isn't likely to be banned from A+A if he stuck to the forum charter.

In fact, I think it would be useful for himself if he did drop by and tried to discuss some of the issues that annoy him with with some of the people he's continually being rude about.

I agree, it would be very useful. Of course, he could already be on A&A anonymously. Wouldn't that be a delicious irony?

A blogger (Mr. Waters' favourite kind of person) has estimated the worth of the most recent article:
http://www.boomingback.org/2013/01/the-true-value-of-john-waters.html

Well her articles are a load of horseshít. :pac:

...ignoring Waters' ****e...