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#McCann Trolls

Draca

Graduate Poster
Draca
Joined
May 9, 2010
Messages
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Sky News did a Special Report on McCann Trolls. Police gathered a dossier of hateful tweets, Facebook posts and comments attacking the McCann family. Sky news reported on the dossier outing a twitter troll known as @sweepyface. The reporter outed @sweepyface as 63 year old Brenda Leyland from Leicestershire on national TV. She responded that she was entitled.

http://news.sky.com/story/1345871/evil-trolls-in-hate-campaign-against-mccanns

Here is the video:
http://news.sky.com/video/1346113/special-report-mccann-trolls
'Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt reports on the dossier of threats and abuse against the family of missing Madeleine McCann.'



A few days later Brenda Leyland aka @sweepyface apparently committed suicide in a hotel she fled to:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...cCanns-dead-hotel-room-days-fleeing-home.html



#McCann Trolls blame the McCann family ......
https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=#mccann&src=tyah
 
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Draca said:
Sky News did a Special Report on McCann Trolls. Police gathered a dossier of hateful tweets, Facebook posts and comments attacking the McCann family. Sky news reported on the dossier outing a twitter troll known as @sweepyface. The reporter outed @sweepyface as 63 year old Brenda Leyland from Leicestershire on national TV. She responded that she was entitled.

http://news.sky.com/story/1345871/evil-trolls-in-hate-campaign-against-mccanns

Here is the video:
http://news.sky.com/video/1346113/special-report-mccann-trolls
'Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt reports on the dossier of threats and abuse against the family of missing Madeleine McCann.'



A few days later Brenda Leyland aka @sweepyface apparently committed suicide in a hotel she fled to:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...cCanns-dead-hotel-room-days-fleeing-home.html



#McCann Trolls blame the McCann family ......
https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=#mccann&src=tyah
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Interesting story. The troll seemed very disturbed. Imagine her horror when she was confronted.
 
Too late now for the media, but I do wish we could use better terminology.

If you send abusive messages to someone, you're a bully. For as long as I can remember, a troll, when discussed in the context of the internet, was someone who stirred ****, making controversial posts to provoke a reaction. It might include personal abuse, but not necessarily.

In this case, and I've only skimmed a few of the messages this woman is alleged to have sent, they don't appear to be particularly nasty, compared to some of the stuff I've seen in the past on Twitter.

It may be that those who post abuse have mental issues; it's hard to think that some of the vitriol poured out is the product of someone in the best of health. Witness the recent gaoling of someone who threatened an MP and those involved in the campaign to bring Jane Austen to Bank of England notes.
 
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Caper said:
Interesting story. The troll seemed very disturbed. Imagine her horror when she was confronted.
Click to expand...

I know the personal histories of some of the people who spew obsessive, daily, online hatred against Amanda Knox. It is not the pastime of well-adjusted individuals. I'm not surprised by what happened here.
 
With all the parents who physically abuse and sexually abuse their kids or engage in actual serious neglect, this is what some people have decided to focus their outrage on? Stepping out to a restaurant 160 ft away?

Just bizarre. "Neglect" now apparently means not watching your kids every second of every day. I mean, if I'm understanding the story right.. I may not be (this is my first time hearing about the McCanns).

It's hard for me to sympathize with this lady who killed herself because what happened to her is pretty much the same thing she was participating in doing to someone else. I do feel bad for her son, though.
 
Is is just me or is a lot of the outrage about being doorstopped because she is a older middle class lady. I don't remember anyone suggesting it was improper to out and doorstop awful trolls when they were males under 35.
 
The Guardian's take

Claire Hardaker of the Guardian weighs in. Concluding paragraph: "Ultimately, individuals who troll or become obsessed with conspiracy theories can be driven by many factors – boredom, loneliness, a need for validation – and we cannot discount the possibility of mental health problems. At times, their behaviour may border on loathsome, but a news team with a high-profile journalist at the helm is not the way to bring about justice."
 
On the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 today (phone in news-based show for two hours on an otherwise music-based channel), one person contacted the show to claim that they had personal knowledge that Mrs Leyland wasn't mentally well. Obviously there is no confirmation of that claim.
 
cornsail said:
With all the parents who physically abuse and sexually abuse their kids or engage in actual serious neglect, this is what some people have decided to focus their outrage on? Stepping out to a restaurant 160 ft away?
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We went a few times to Butlins (holiday camp). I don't remember much about it (too young), but we would be left in the chalet whilst our parents were in the bar, or somesuch. But Butlins had a service where they patrolled the chalets to check for children awake, and possibly upset. These days I think it's discontinued: maybe they don't want the responsibly if a child were to be abducted, and I wouldn't blame them.
 
Primus said:
Is is just me or is a lot of the outrage about being doorstopped because she is a older middle class lady. I don't remember anyone suggesting it was improper to out and doorstop awful trolls when they were males under 35.
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Most of the outrage is coming from her fellow hatemongers.
 
commandlinegamer said:
We went a few times to Butlins (holiday camp). I don't remember much about it (too young), but we would be left in the chalet whilst our parents were in the bar, or somesuch. But Butlins had a service where they patrolled the chalets to check for children awake, and possibly upset.
Click to expand...

It was also the case that the perimitor of the camps was fairly secure, hence "Butlitz."
 
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Charlie Wilkes said:
Most of the outrage is coming from her fellow hatemongers.
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There are no winners here.
Latza Nadeau quotes this tweet

“To Kate and Gerry, you will be hated by millions for the rest of your miserable, evil, conniving lives, have a nice day!”

While it is not possible to finesse this into a sympathetic portrait of this woman, she was probably intoxicated when posting.
 
Given the volume of similar tweets http://greptweet.com/u/sweepyface/sweepyface.txt that she sent, she must have been pretty much permanently intoxicated. Or perhaps not.

It really frosts my grill that some people on the 'hate the McCanns' bandwagon call Madeleine 'Maddy' (something the family never did) and claim to be so grief-stricken over Madeleine's disappearance that they are suffering more than the McCanns - despite them never having met Madeleine or known her in any way outside the newspaper stories.

I don't get why people feel the need to insert themselves into someone else's tragedy to the extent that some online keyboard warriors have. It's clear from these tweets and the websites such as the '3 arguidos' that this group of people they feel they know more about the events than anyone who was there, the police of two countries or the social services who investigated the family - and that they somehow have been granted the 'right' to indulge in a hate campaign.

I don't think the McCanns did the right thing in leaving the kids alone, but it does happen, particularly on holiday. And their error of judgement still doesn't make them murderers, or more culpable than the actual abductor.
 
People got seriously obsessed by it. Not long after it happened I was working a crappy call centre where there was no internet access at your desk but you could go on the company website which had a forum on it. I used to read it to pass the time and there was a whole section which was just people obsessed with the McCanns. They were convinced they were part of some important investigation that would actually have some effect on real life and must have spent upwards of 8 hours a day every day arguing about it. Some of it was quite chilling. There was one bloke who thought he should be allowed to adopt their remaining children as they shouldn't be allowed to look after kids.
 
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