Why do people do this? What do they get out of it?

[Spottyphonecase]

Disclaimer - THIS IS NOT A THREAD ABOUT HARRY AND MEGHAN it is about Twitter

Whilst scrolling Twitter I came across a tweet about H and M and it was shocking. They were accusations that her pregnancy wasn’t real, the baby isn’t real and so on. I clicked on the person and their whole thread is a hate account against them. There is hundreds of hate accounts directed at H and M. Talking to my husband about it and he said there is hate accounts against most people famous and he has seen loads.

What do people get out of it? I don’t like certain celebrities it would never cross my mind to make an account to hate in them and pick everything they do apart. The account I saw, the tweeter?? Posted nearly every hour so it is obviously more than a hobby. Why do people do this, do they get anything out of it?

Some people are obsessive about their favourite celebrities / famous people.

Your DH is right there are hate accounts focused on many famous people - some are more polarizing than others though.

Twitter is a bit of a cesspool in general.

It makes them feel bigger, somehow, and gets them some attention from other haters.

Unfortunately this sort of thing makes some people feel better about themselves. God knows why. Personally I’ve got enough of my own issues to worry about without wasting energy on hating people.

I imagine they’re probably sad in some way. Some people get way too wrapped up in the royals/reality tv stars/celebs etc. It’s almost a mixture of feeling like they know them and forgetting that they are real people. I can barely be bothered hating people I actually know never mind people I’ve never met.

Escapism?
Boredom?
Mental ill-health?

It's bizarre and if I found out a friend or acquaintance was doing this I'd be going NC sharpish!

Yes I think if I knew someone who did this I wouldn’t be friends with them.

I did notice the account had thousands of followers and I wonder if they see it as a status of some sort? Does it make them feel important?

They're not usually people - they're usually bots. They're accounts run to essentially do outrageous things or jump on bandwagons to gain followers. Once they have a bunch of followers, the name of the account is changed, the content is all deleted and the account login is sold to someone who wants to have lots of followers on Twitter.

@CopperBear
Wow I did not know that. Are bots run by humans please excuse my idiotic question if you want

Sadly SM is an easy route for bullies.

People who can write hate on a screen.

It's actually really sad that some peoples lives only consist of this. Whilst they are living someone else's life theirs is passing by.

[quote Taliskerskye]@CopperBear
Wow I did not know that. Are bots run by humans please excuse my idiotic question if you want[/quote]
Kind of. They're set up by people but people aren't writing the posts. People write a computer code which directs the bot to scan the internet and post certain things - usually around a theme. For example, an account would scan the internet for posts about anti-vax theories and share/post them. Once they're set up, they run themselves, and they gain followers by tapping into a theme (like H&M bashing or anti-vax etc). Then, when they hit a certain number of followers, the person who set it up wipes them and sells them. The purchaser then starts posting their own content and, often, will make money marketing products/services because they have a lot of followers.

I don't know but whenever I encounter accounts like this I report them. Same as I do on all social media.
Whilst I appreciate we have freedom of speech, if what is being said steps into racial/sexual harassment or spouting unacceptable bile, then they need removing from the platform.

YANBU

I remember there used to be a tv show where celebrities would confront the actual people who posted such terrible and nasty things. Some of them even said things about the celebrities’ children. I can’t remember the name of the show.

I definitely wouldn’t want to be friends or even acquaintances with people like that. I’d avoid them like the plague. If they’re happy to say and think such things about people they don’t know, have never met, and no bearing on their lives whatsoever, what do they say and think about the people they do!

It's twitter, it needs to be nuked. There is hate threads for and against any political persuasion/celebrity/point of view with each other waiting to trip the other side up at any opportunity and pretend outrage against the other side doing the same.

Even the media create stories around a subject because a hundred people are 'outraged' on twitter.

Everyone involved in twitter are guilty of it, it's a point scoring excerise.

There shouldn't be hate accounts directed at people (celeb or otherwise), but at the same time, I'm sick of hearing about H&M all of the time. It's one of those "done-to-death" topics that is impossible to escape from because it is everywhere.

There are a lot of angry, bitter and frustrated people, who for whatever reason will project their focus on to somebody else.

Tattle is one big hate site.Go on there and it'll open your eyes as to how awful people are.

There shouldn't be hate accounts directed at people (celeb or otherwise), but at the same time, I'm sick of hearing about H&M all of the time. It's one of those "done-to-death" topics that is impossible to escape from because it is everywhere.

Is it though? I don’t hear anything about H&M outside of the Internet. I only see anything about them on MN or social media and even on social media, it’s stories from months ago or even years ago. I’ve seen hundreds of comments on some stories on Facebook that were from 2019! You can also hide and easily ignore these things. There are actual options to do so. I don’t buy that such celebrities are impossible to escape or to ignore them. People can, they just choose not to and then want to complain about it.

For many it must be boredom combined with unhealthy obsession. Maybe they feel a sense of community within their echo chamber. People feel braver saying hateful things when they think they're anonymous. Some people with a large following can make money out of it e.g. monetising YouTube videos.

I've no idea but I stumbled across Tattle once and was shocked...When I'm being generous, I think some people don't understand the difference between sharing opinions and being bitchy and bullying. Sometimes I think the people they talk about become too abstract and people get carried away, forget its real, feel part of a group (tribal mentality). But most of the time, I just think they're horrible human beings.

Sounds awful. Never seen one. Suspect some mental health issue or a significant inadequacy of some sort ?

I think they get a little power, adrenaline and attention. Trolling is only for people who lack those things in real life. No one who actually has attention or any power or excitement in real life wastes their time trolling others.