The Tweeple Are Crazy

I alluded to the Tweeple incident earlier, but let me dig into it in more detail. Consider this a followup to previous posts on community.

Apparently there's a word that is gaining some currency in the twitterverse - namely, the word "tweeple." Here's an example of the use of the term:

AndrewBadera morning Tweeple! 05:23 AM December 02, 2007 from web

And here's another example:

kelly_illogical morning tweeple! 08:44 AM December 04, 2007 from web

And here's a response:

JoshScanlan @kelly_illogical tweeple? ugh... 09:06 AM December 04, 2007 from web in reply to kelly_illogical

And here's the response to the response:

kelly_illogical wow i love how rude some people are.... 09:09 AM December 04, 2007 from web

And here's the fallout:

JoshScanlan Wow someone stopped following me because I mocked them a little bit... I guess I can't joke around. Today is the day that happiness died. 09:20 AM December 04, 2007 from web

And here's the idiot who commented on it:

oemperor @joshscanlan that's illogical... :) my tweets probably deserve to be mocked daily 09:47 AM December 04, 2007 from web in reply to JoshScanlan

Seriously, this illustrates one of the drawbacks of online communication, and is the reason that the airlines are still in business despite NetMeeting and everything else. When you only catch part of the conversation, you only catch part of the conversation. Telephone communications are bad enough, but written communications, where the words are just sitting there, can often be misconstrued as mean when they weren't meant to be mean.

But the Tweeple misunderstanding pales in comparison to this little issue (TechCrunch):

Suburban Milwaukee high school chemistry teacher James Buss was arrested last week after leaving an anonymous comment on the Boots And Sabers political blog as part of a discussion on teacher’s salaries.

The anonymous post from this teacher was an anti-teacher rant that was so over the top that it was over the top. Or not.

We’ve got to get in back of the kids who have had enough of lazy, no good teachers and are fighting back. Kids like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold members of the Young Republicans club at Columbine. They knew how to deal with the overpaid teacher union thugs.

That resulted in an arrest and a possible charge of disorderly conduct, because someone apparently took the post seriously.

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