Now let me get this right off the bat.
Abuse online is abhorrent.
It has no place in society and if it was up to me, all twitter accounts should be made to register a name and address so that those partaking in abuse can be tracked down and charged/fined etc…. whatever the punishment may be.
What is completely wrong tho is that when you target someone online for a pile on and that backfires, i.e. you are held to account for it then you absolutely have no right to claim or play the victim card.
And that is exactly what journalist Andrew Dickson seemed to attempt yesterday on Twitter.
In what I can only assume was in a response to this Kyogo tweet:
Hope wee Kyogo is doing all right this evening, looks like another fair old clout he took to his head earlier. I’m just thankful he never had to play against the Ross Tokelys of this world. Keep him in your thoughts tonight please everyone.
— Andrew Dickson (@mrandrewdickson) November 7, 2021
Tweeted to his 33.5k followers who are mostly all Rangers fans, we all know what Dickson was insinuating to his followers.
If he was really mad about it, he could have tagged the Celtic striker in his tweet, discussed it man to man.
He didn’t, Kyogo was none the wiser and the accusation regarding the Celtic players professionalism began without having the right of reply.
See how this works?
Dickson then came out with a shameful hypothetical scenario where he, you know what? Just read this:
A hypothetical question after a fair few derogatory tweets from Celtic fans today: what if I was really struggling mentally? I'm not, but say I was. The first reaction from too many on here – and not just them – is to abuse and it's not acceptable. Does it make people feel big?
— Andrew Dickson (@mrandrewdickson) November 11, 2021
Not that I'm encouraging a change in this… but I've never had a person come up to me in person and act the way so many do on here. Not a single one. And to anyone targeted by keyboard warriors, remember that. It's all talk because they can hide behind anonymity.
— Andrew Dickson (@mrandrewdickson) November 11, 2021
Now I’ll say it again, online abuse is abhorrent.
I’ve not searched through Andrew’s tweets so I am going to take his word for it that he received some derogatory replies, but if you are going to try to cast aspersions on someone’s character and people take you to task for it, come out and say you got it wrong.
Apologise at most, delete the offending tweet at least.
But surely to goodness you don’t try and cloud the issue by hiding behind mental health issues that don’t even exist.
That’s just plain wrong.