6:30AM BST 26 Jun 2012
It must have seemed like such a good idea at the time. Friday night, a few drinks down, and X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos decides to share her thoughts with her two million-plus Twitter followers. No doubt making perfect sense as she tapped them out on her BlackBerry, they read: “N as 4 all u ------ haters… u can kiss my ------ ass #gettingpaid #bothered? Gdsgdhdhdhdh hahaha.”
Tulisa, who hails from Greek Cypriot stock, was not tweeting in her native tongue, but in “youth speak”, her message a drunken tirade against those who criticise her. Given that her tweets can seem incoherent even when she is sober (sample: “Ooooouuuuuuuuuccccccchhhh MY HEAD HURTS… oh well. self inflicted I guess… round 2 any1? DING DING”), her inebriated rant should perhaps have come as no surprise. Yet her diatribe lost her several thousand followers and provoked criticism from Helen Wright, the head of St Mary’s School, Calne in Wiltshire. “As someone in the public eye, Tulisa has a responsibility to behave properly,” said Dr Wright. “Her bad language sets a terrible example, not to mention her drunkenness. People have got to think before they speak or tweet, especially those who have a particular influence over others.”
Ain’t that the truth. A decade ago, hangover paranoia made you check your mobile phone for inappropriate texts. Today, one must wade through emails, Facebook, and most importantly, Twitter, which potentially broadcasts to the world. No matter that you’ve got three followers, it takes only one to retweet your drunken missive to their followers, who in turn retweet it to theirs…
This is the tweet-before-you-think generation and they still don’t grasp that some details are best kept to themselves. So Liam Stacey discovered. The Welsh student posted drunken, racist tweets about footballer Fabrice Muamba. His vile words – released as the Bolton player lay close to death in hospital – were retweeted around the internet to horrified Twitter users and landed him 56 days in prison.
It seems you don’t have to be a somebody to get the attention of everybody. Take the Red Cross worker who accidentally tweeted from the charity’s Twitter account, thinking it was hers. “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of beer,” wrote the employee. “When we drink we do it right.”
Inevitably, it is celebrities who prove to be the worst Twitter liabilities, causing headaches for PRs. “You put all this effort into presenting a certain façade,” one told me, “and it’s undone at the touch of a button.” A persistent offender is Rihanna, who told fans that she “officially lost my liver last night!!!” and that “the worst part of having so much fun is not remembering any of it!!!” One can only hope that rapper Jay Electronica was inebriated when he sent tweets to Ben Goldsmith, the estranged husband of his new girlfriend, Kate Rothschild. “Stop acting like a b----.”
You don’t even have to be on Twitter to find yourself in trouble. Brian Presley is an American actor who prides himself on his reputation as a devout Christian and devoted husband and father. But all that was thrown into question recently when a model tweeted his attempts to seduce her on a flight to New York. Melissa Stetten only discovered the charmer in the seat next to her was well-known after her followers explained that he is a soap opera actor. One of her tweets was: “Did I just ruin Brian Presley’s life via Twitter?”
There is hope, however. A new app allows users of Twitter to delete embarrassing tweets. Tweeticide gets rid of all of your tweets in one go, thus erasing any mortifying online evidence of the night before. What a shame there isn’t an app that gets rid of offline antics, too.
