I’ve been expanding my Twitter circle recently, trying to find a bit more
content out there which is outside my normal line of interest. To my existing
contacts, which include Sitecore Professionals, CRM and .NET specialists and
Social Media bods, I have widened the net to philosophical and comedic
Twitterers.

But today I am losing two of them.

First to go was @redstarvip, who decided he wanted to start a debate with:

Now I’m all for open debate, but this seemed to be asking for a fight and
inviting ill educated responses. There are ways to structure debate to try and
ensure that the debate remains an informed and stable one. The language he used
was just plain provocative. To be fair to him, he did reply back:

Didn’t seem like he was using much logic to me.

And I’m also losing @stephenfry. I actually do not agree with Stephen Fry’s online presence, having disagreed with him previously about his blog where he seems suddenly to be an authority in IT consumer electronics (He has one of those unhealthy hatreds of a certain operating system). Fair enough though, the man has an opinion, and everyone is entitled to an opinion. I started following him due to my colleagues/friends all appreciating his style on QI, and I have to admit I was a fan of Fry and Laurie, when he was funny. The man is a very clever man, and I do appreciate “clever” humour.

A very quick way for me to lose respect for someone. This highlights a
weakness of Twitter. It can be used to insult, lie and be downright rude across
the net with no consequence. My Grand-parents always used to tell me, “People
who swear do so because they aren’t intelligent enough to find the right words”.
Well, I don’t understand what’s going on here but I sure don’t want to listen
to/read this outburst just because an educated man can’t use an operating system
he doesn’t prefer.