Express & Star

The meanies should be forced to fly the Twitter nest

Twitter is the mean girl at school.

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The one whose parents allow her to wear short skirts, the one who never gets spots, the one who plays in goal attack and then makes you cry in the changing room afterwards.

She teases Kim for wearing the wrong dress or Jessie for being a bit different.

She hangs around with the bad lads too, the ones who smoulder on streets corners, drinking, smoking and thinking they look cool.

She is the scourge of the schoolyard and deserves a detention slip. Or better yet, expelled once and for all.

Twitter is one of the reasons society is at its meanest right now. Nothing, no small mishap nor slip of the tongue, goes unpunished. Wait, scrap that, no good deed nor kind word, goes unpunished.

Everything, everywhere is up for searing scrutiny at all times.

Lately, trends on Twitter have included having a pop at pregnant women, abusing a teenager and organising death parties. Nice.

Oh, on that last one, by all means take closure or comfort from it but actually leaving your house to get drunk on cheap plonk and dance to Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead in the streets makes you a little bit strange. Twitter has demolished the manners of this country with one huge bluebird-shaped wrecking ball.

The things people say to one another on there are astounding. Things they would never say to someone's face. Grown men hurling sexually-charged insults at young girls, women bitching and biting as though their lives depend on it and strange anonymous folk who hurl abuse as monkeys hurl poo in a zoo, it's all on there.

True, some people do themselves no favours in the way they act but often in no way deserve the tsunami of bile that follows. Take for instance Kent's oh-so-brief youth crime commissioner, 17-year-old Paris Brown or professional bottom Kim Kardashian. The former posted stupid, childish messages (shocking, what with her being a child and all) and the latter wore a few dodgy dresses – they were called everything from "vile excuse for a human being" to a "disgusting big b*tch". Jeez.

And poor Jessie J, whose crimes consist of little more than talking too much and wearing bad nail varnish on The Voice, gets so much abuse each time the show airs she had to put out a statement asking people to leave her alone.

Is this what it's come to? Wasn't social media supposed to be the start of a beautiful new world of communication not the equivalent of a falling into a virtual cesspit?

Maybe I'm too sensitive? Perhaps naive? I may even simply be too nice, although I doubt that last one. Whatever it may be, Twitter just seems like a strange alien battlefield to me. One I won't be leaving the trenches to join any time soon.

And don't even get me started on Mumsnet...

One last thing

My name is Elizabeth and I'm a pie-a-holic. Seriously, is it possible to be addicted to the combination of puff pastry and meat? It's hardly a speedball I know, but still, things are getting out of hand.

I missed the first 20 minutes of the Wolves match the other day because I was so engrossed in the chicken balti loveliness in front of me.

I'm also googling "pie recipes" far too often, my fingers now type the words without my brain even engaging

I'm considering rehab. Or moving into Mad O'Rourkes.

Read Elizabeth Joyce first in Saturday's Express & Star Weekend supplement

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