Twitter Attack

What would you do if you were Twitter Attacked? Twitter is all the rage now. I’m on it. Just about everyone I know tweets. News stations tweet. The President tweets. People tweet while flying, driving, eating, whenever, wherever.

But have you ever thought about what you would do if someone on Twitter decided to attack you? Would you fight back? Could you fight back?

The answer to “Would you fight back?” is it would be pointless. You’d only antagonize the bully and up the fire. The answer to “Could you fight back?” is apparently no.

I say “apparently” because an attack is going on right now. By a writer against two authors. The attacker is vicious. Probably 90% of the attacker’s tweets are hateful barbs against the credibility, the looks, the honesty, the works, the believability, the very soul of the two authors. Tweet after tweet after tweet after tweet. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t let up.

The two authors can do nothing. Twitter will do nothing. Twitter’s written rule is that, before it steps in, the attacker has to make a physical threat and name the place and time of the physical attack. The attacker has no reason to do that. The attacker can do more damage through a cyber attack.

And so the attack continues. One lie after another. One hateful attack after another. One virtual stab after another. On and on. Ad infinitum.

I am not adding my usual "Tweet This" bird because I'd rather you not tweet this. I don't want to add to the attacker's growing popularity. I consider this a sad and scary situation for the two authors being attacked. But I do think it's something each of us should be aware of.