The internet is arguably the most depressing place in the world if you want to feel good about the human species. I could point to some of the quality of spelling and grammar on internet dating profiles but this piece isn’t about that. This is about stupid American’s who can’t comprehend that someone can have the same name as someone else and not just that – that someone who spells his name differently to someone else isn’t the same person as someone else.
This is the tale of two men – one Jerry Sandusky who is in jail and will spend the rest of his life there for despicable crimes against young boys over many years and one a Baltimore based broadcaster called Gerry Sandusky. This man is not in jail and has not been found guilty of heinous crimes against young boys but apparently many imbeciles on twitter can’t understand the difference between the two.
There is a fantastic piece entitled Gerry Sandusky Is Not Jerry Sandusky (Or: Why The Internet Is Just The Worst Sometimes) which is where I first saw this but if you can’t be bothered to view the link I’ll post a couple of examples here. These are real tweets that this Baltimore based broadcaster has received from people who think that he is the same man as the paedophile who is (and remember this) currently in jail and whilst my knowledge of the American panel system isn’t grand I don’t think too many life inmates have access to twitter.
Oh boy…
So he’s no relation and now the tweeter thinks that he is his dad…
Just too depressing sometimes. If you go to this poor blokes twitter feed you’ll see he is getting a lot of this. Even now when Jerry Sandusky is in prison. People are just so stupid that they cannot tell two people with similar names apart. I wonder how they would feel if it happened to them and a similar person to their name perpetrated horrific crimes and they were getting stick about it. However people don’t think like that. Heck some people don’t even think.
Some people have also been tweeting his picture and making web pages about him claiming that he is a paedophile and how evil and wrong it is that he has a twitter account from inside jail. Well I suppose it isn’t a surprise from a country that thinks universal health care is a bad idea that they can be this dumb.
I love twitter as it is a great tool but twitter is also a place where the moron can get a voice and that voice can cause damage. It makes me despair. It really does…
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When it comes to UK morons, don’t get me started on those that appear on Jeremy Kyle. My God! Funnily enough there’s a US version of the show too, which is just as shocking.
In terms of your point on there being more US morons than UK, you can point to the population of the two nations. Roughly 300 million and 60 million respectively.
I think it’s a bit of a stretch pinning this type of thing solely on American’s. The (shocking) case of abuse was covered widely in the US press, but got very limited pick up in UK, explains lack of UK morons getting their tweets spectacularly wrong.
A similar case of UK Twitter users getting it wrong would be the abuse cyclist Chris Hoy got after a controversial game refereed by Chris Foy. And – non Twitter – but, who could forget the story of people on a council estate going mob handed to a Paeditricians practice as they thought it meant he was a paedophile.
I’m sure I’ve misspelled some of the above words, so apologies for that! Am writing this with a severe case of man flu on an iPhone – a deadly combination I’m sure you will agree!
Two very pertinent points Dan. Certainly the one about the people on the Paulsgrove Estate. I actually have relations who live on said estate which is something I’m not sure quite how I feel about but yes the Chris Foy/Hoy stuff as well.
It just goes to show how twitter has its fair share of morons – in this case it was mainly Yanks – but we have our own as well.