To feel sorry for this woman?

[Mammanat222]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2781377/BREAKING-NEWS-Internet-troll-targeted-McCanns-dead-hotel-room-days-fleeing-home.html

OK so her hobby of internet trolling (and her subjects!!) was a bit dodgy BUT I cannot help to feel quite sorry for how she was treated??

AIBU

I just think Twitter has a hardcore of individuals who are obsessed with the McCann case and these people feed into each others obsession, not in a good way, and are more responsible for this woman's death than Sky is.

Brenda Leyland said she was "entitled" to do what she was doing online - i.e. troll. What does that actually mean?

Maybe some good will come out of her death if it stimulates a proper debate about freedom of speech on the internet and how far it should be allowed to go.

Hopefully, it might also cause some people to just stop and think before hurling abuse and vitriol at strangers across the internet, simply because they are using a pseudonym. Not just in relation to the McCanns, although they have suffered more than most.

But even on chat forums like MN and Digital Spy, you see some incredibly nasty posts making all kinds of negative and spiteful comments to total strangers, simply because they have a view that's different to yours.
I'm always amazed on here at how some posters can't see the difference between telling someone that their post was unpleasant or bitchy and actually calling the poster a 'fucking bitch' or a 'nasty piece of work' or whatever.

You've done it now Plinky, they have removed your post!!

Ah well, I have empathy for both sides of the argument but I guess there is only one side of the argument we are allowed to know :) Whilst people get away with posting some vile things about a dead woman! Ah well! Hey ho :)

Also amusing that the press and posters here are continually allowed to defame her by calling her a 'troll' when she is not. Her family need a better legal team!

You can defame the dead. It may be in bad taste, but it is not a crime or a civil wrong.

What sort of person would post cruel messages on social media? Nasty people? People who are nasty secretly but openly friendly and can-do-no-wrong. Not my cup of tea.

If a troll is defined as someone who posts vile, spiteful things intended to upset another person for the principal purpose of upsetting them, then she was a troll.

As discussed many, many times over this thread and others - that is NOT the definition of a troll var123.

I'm sorry plinkyplonks, but I think it is.

But that is how people will think of her, whether you keep saying that it isn't the definition of a troll, or not.

Excellent var123 let's redefine the word because you, var123 want it to mean something different. Can I do that with the rest of the dictionary too? Any other words you wish you redefine to suit your agenda whilst we're at it?

The media has decreed that "troll" has a new meaning, and we must obey the media!
They are wrong.

I don't feel at all sorry. What she did was utterly repugnant and she didn't care about the Mcann's and the fact she was a mother herself only made it worse in my view.

I'm afraid I don't feel sorry either, although given what's been revealed about her internet activities I suspect she may have had mental health issues. She apparently wrote thousands of messages over the past seven years saying horrible things about the McCanns, saying she hated them (when she didn't even know them ), and that they deserved what happened and far worse than that. Its not really normal to get so het up about something you're not personally involved with, is it?

Marmiteandjamislush, so you feel no sympathy for Brenda Leyland because of her actions?
She felt the same way about the McCanns!

Quite Marmite, totally agree.

Juneau, I think it is not "normal" to think an injustice has happened and to do nothing about it.
Both the pro and anti McCann groups want justice for the child, and are not so different to each other.

Lets all take the law into our own hands then honey.

plinkyplonks: If you mean that a troll is defined as mythical creature from scandinvian fokelore, and it can only mean that, then you would be right that it couldn't apply to Mrs Leyland.

However, if you take the more modern meaning, of someone who posts offensive, provocative things online with the intention of upsetting others, then, unfortunately, for both Mrs leylands and the McCanns she was a troll. Just saying she wasn't, doesn't make it so.

What were the Mcann's actions gentle? They never maliciously set out to hurt anyone. At worse they made a mistake that they will have to live with for ever. Though I suppose you are a perfect parent 24/7.

Bowlersarm, we can all protest without breaking the law, as long as we have free speech.