Friday 12 September 2014

The Art of Trolling and other Social Media Nasties

Anyone who reads my Twitter feed, see's my Flickr and 500px pages and is my friend or family on Facebook knows that I love photography and that it goes hand in hand with my other love of astronomy.

Anyone who has ever tried to combine the two will also know that IT IS NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS.  Hard work, hours at a time and energy are put into both and I share it with like minded people because they understand the process only too well.

So...when I've given permission for use of my photography to anyone, I've done so in the knowledge that those people are trusted with correct usage whether they have paid for the photo or not.

Earlier this year in February 2014 I had a run-in with two major daily UK newspapers that had used a photo which they swiped from another paper that already had my permission.  The result being they agreed to pay costs and damages.  This was settled amicably on both sides.

Last night I was given a heads up by a family member about a local paper that already had my permission to use the same photo (originally correctly credited) that had of yesterday been re-posted on their FB webpage. Unfortunately, the link to the FB page showed a distinctly pixelated image with no credit; once you clicked on the news item it did indeed take you to the local paper's website where the image was correctly displayed.


  1. It would have been nice for the local paper to just ask again for it to be used.
  2. I will always now question that integrity originally proferred to me by this paper.
  3. The resulting reply comments on the paper's FB page under my comment querying the issue are the product of ignorance from a mass audience that refuse to check their heads before opening their mouths because...well it's easy to do so when that person is not in front of you eh?
Now I'm guessing you're all thinking "Crap...whose been having a pop at Twinkle?!" and "Where's the link to this, I wanna dive in?!" well...you have been warned...

 Abandon


Silly isn't it?

Now if this 'item' belonged to any one of them, they would be up in arms and all over it like a rash, but because the author made comment they feel disconnected in some way, so that's alright then we can trash and troll away to our hearts content right?  Wrong.

Facebook has it covered if you are not clappy happy:                                                             Standards

I'm guessing that these type of people don't have much experience in life, have never done any real hard graft, grown or created anything from scratch, never come close to death, stood 200 yards from a 1 ton bomb going off and never had to make their way home through that carnage, never cared for an animal or much less a human and never stood in wonder at nature or the planet we live on.

At the time of blogging this issue isn't really a problem since I'm not feeling harassed...however it could go completely pear-shaped, you just never know.  Interestingly the local paper's webmaster hasn't responded back since the reply last night.

I don't use FB particularly often or extensively for this very reason and I'm only connected to people I know, can trust and are also my family (and believe me, I get hacked off by family too at times!).

Social media is great for debate and comment and really should be used for such as if you had that person standing in front of you..e.g. would you really call that lady a c**t to her face?  Many of us think that is OK on a keyboard but you'd likely get a black eye in reality.

On Twitter I can block those who are downright stupid, arrogant and full of nastiness, it's a simply click and I actually prefer debate on this medium.  However, I generally love all of my followers and the people I follow, it's rare I have to block anyone.  In future I'll just be asking the FB webpage owners to remove any of my stuff or links to it if such a thing is abused.

If you're hoping to see Aurora (the Northern Lights) in the North or South of England tonight or tomorrow as predicted may happen due to the G3 solar storm, my advice is.....get checking the NOAA website, get off your butts, get outside, get away from street lighting, get your eyes accustomed to the dark (30 mins minimum) and get looking for yourselves.   In the words of Paul Newman:

"Stop feeding off of me!"