Taking one for the team.

Twitter really was the wild west last night if you were an England supporter.

Sure I follow a scant 500ish tweeps, but the level of barbed comment, snide comment and plain old nastiness was quite rife.

Of course you're entitled to an opinion, but when it's based on insecurity and displays your rabid bigotry and racism then it possibly crosses the line from humorous to hurtful.

And it's just reserved for the English, whose crimes I can list as

1.  Being English


2. Not being Welsh


3. Not being Irish


4. Not being Scottish


5. Daring to win the RWC


6. Choosing a Black strip as an alternate, the same as Wales have done.

That's pretty much it I think. I've never witnessed anything quite like it, normally normal people becoming complete cocks. It's not like the English ever did anything to the New Zealand team. When it comes to rugby the New Zealand position seems to be the most English of all, arrogance in the face of facts that would indicate otherwise that the All Blacks are the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be.

Fact is that every team, everywhere, any sport, likes to beat England. That's what you get when at one point the whole world was for the Empire, and you paid your respects to an island nation miles away.

I like New Zealand I will eventually get the point where I lived half my life here, my children will benefit from being English, and their children too. I just hope that they have better grace and manners when it comes to knowing the past and how to move to the future.

Faux outrage, Faux compassion and chipping in!

or slamming and damning, counselling and group grieving and how I learned to react in a group.

Led mostly by media snippets and reporting (often poorly repeated, and incomplete, inaccurate and angled for spin) the collective 'we' is often to quick to anger. Twitter is the new benchmark, Facebook pages would be next. You never hear of a TXT based outrage campaign though.

The hive mind is quick to pounce on indiscretion and verbalise their thoughts. Woe to anyone who swims against the tide. Someone often leads the charge and will whip a horse to death, but then we all have a 'thing' that does that to us (that's a whole new subject).

We're morally indignant about infidelity, as if we're all whiter than white, we're dumbfounded by misogyny, as if men have never leered at a woman of used a stick mag, and we can't belive that a school would add a computing device to the compulsory list for stationery.

We definitely cannot belive  that the Israeli's in Christchurch are tourists, although this seems to be a media hobby-horse and not a hive mind collective.

Anything the Government of the day announces can be negative, mostly negative. The twitterverse will be abuzz with the newly disenfranchised in minutes, spreading like a wildfire, it is to behold!

Similarly with a death. the hive mind seems to get it into its head to want to grieve. Mostly for people they never met, didn't know and didn't much care for before their death. particularly but not limited to children, young pretty females and young males. This is more a Facebook thing. But we're all hectored and badgered into having to be part of a group that mourns, without really understanding why. Hey it's a young person they died in some way or other and we should all feel some collective guilt.

Sure death is tragic, children dying is tragic, young people getting into situations where they kill themselves and others is tragic. It happens daily, worldwide, a lot. Old people die too, but then they had a life already get over it. I don't need to join a Facebook group or have some faux emotion based on an out of context picture in the press or on Facebook. Ge over yourselves.

As for counselling. What an industry that is, we have to take into personal consideration the thoughts and actions of everyone. This will and does and can lead to sheeplike behaviours and group feelings. Individually no, group yes. Naturally I'm not a psychiatrist or behaviours expert but I'm happy to bet cash on this being true.

So Faux Outrage and Grief, the latest big thing, or just the big thing.

Makes it sound like I'm not on any bandwagon, trust me I get on them, and then I get off most of the, some I just sit on for the ride.

Twitter for Whingers

OMG!

It's safe for me to say this here of course, but I thought twitter was a couple of things.

One for me to ramble and possibly entertain the unwary, two one for me to be entertained by the ramblings of others that I choose to be entertained by.

Three is to gather information by being a follower of a knowledge source, or vendor

and Four to interact with those people in a two-way way.

But crikey there are a couple of New Zealanders who use twitter, and who also have web-site and profess to "blog" that are dead-set out to abuse their freedom by haranguing and blustering on certain New Zealand companies, mostly the telcos.

Now the Telcos have to respond to a whinge and whine, and this somehow is taken to mean that the offensive twittering and whinging and whining can continue. It's just being bombastic. What's more it seems to give those individuals an elevated  sense of worth.

Lucky I can unfollow these from my personal account but I have to follow them from our corporate account, and that grates me so it does.

Twitter for Whingers

OMG!

It's safe for me to say this here of course, but I thought twitter was a couple of things.

One for me to ramble and possibly entertain the unwary, two one for me to be entertained by the ramblings of others that I choose to be entertained by.

Three is to gather information by being a follower of a knowledge source, or vendor

and Four to interact with those people in a two-way way.

But crikey there are a couple of New Zealanders who use twitter, and who also have web-site and profess to "blog" that are dead-set out to abuse their freedom by haranguing and blustering on certain New Zealand companies, mostly the telcos.

Now the Telcos have to respond to a whinge and whine, and this somehow is taken to mean that the offensive twittering and whinging and whining can continue. It's just being bombastic. What's more it seems to give those individuals an elevated  sense of worth.

Lucky I can unfollow these from my personal account but I have to follow them from our corporate account, and that grates me so it does.