Hello Twitter (I love you) and oh dear Twitter (the bad side of)
I have to start here. No doubt about that. Hello Muddle and Garmon *waves* you may be the only two to read this and we know it will take muddle a year to get on it!
I joined twitter about a year and a half ago. I didnât really get in to it until I was bought a kindle for Christmas last year. What was I supposed to do with a Kindle? Facebook, Twitter, Ebay? Oh the joys of a bigger screen. I was never going to read a book on it. I like paper books, you know the old fashioned type and a Kindle is fucking useless in the bath. Iâm not knocking it though Iâve built a massive prehistoric theme park via one of the apps and can photo edit all my selfies.
Back to Twitter. Christmas last year, big screen, spell check I was in my element. 10 days off work and millions of people online to interact with. Who needs real friends?! It was going ok, lots of debates to be had, sad stories to read but most of all interaction. An instant and continuous time line of distraction.
I post too much crap, all will agree that follow. I like to get drunk and share my drunken joy with you all.  I tweet randomly and without apology. Everyone has an unfollow and a block button. I wonât be offended if you use it, unless of course you do! I enjoy reading the people I follow and the more random the better. I have a lot of time on my hands and my excuse is that I do an emotional job and twitter is my release from that role.
I have met very interesting people, most of which I would like to meet down the pub. For the non-drinkers a cup of tea would be lovely. For the most part I have whole heartedly joined the realms of this 140 character world. I get a little feeling of joy if someone famous follows and almost instantly tweet them someone thing thatâs creates a quick face palm of embarrassment.
I have an interest in world affairs but never pretend to have any great knowledge in these matters. We all have our opinions rightly or wrongly. Iâm quite happy to be corrected and educated into another way of seeing things. I have a lot of religious/ non-religious people I follow and this can make for interesting debate. I watch people get into trouble and I see a lot that makes for quite disturbing reading. I enjoy the conspiracy theories and animals dressed in clothing (I know, Iâm working on that). I follow a pigeon and a boring tweeter. They make me smile and laugh out loud. Itâs all been good.
Until I met MoâŚ.
I donât understand the whole Israel/Gaza thing and never will but it was all kicking off again last Christmas. I do understand however that I have a great hatred of people killing each other over religion. I wanted to have a better understanding of why they were fighting and peace could not be found. I thought I could learn from some of the intellectual debates on twitter.
I followed the self-appointment preacher (I call him that because he preaches) last November/December. He was talking about Gaza and I agreed and interacted with some of what he was saying. It quickly became apparent to me that there was much more behind this self-appointed figure. I think Iâm a good judge of character and will not be moved on my thoughts of this man. Most of these thoughts I will keep to myself but know that they are shared by many others, this is reassuring for me.
Me and Mo Ansar⌠the fall out
Many articles have been written about him so this is mine.
Mo posted a disturbing article (source unknown) about the young girl who was brutally raped on the bus in India. It was a horrific read and completely unnecessary for people to be exposed to. I did not finish reading the article. His defence for posting such an article was that rape needed to be discussed. (when a bandwagon needs jumping on call Mo) My argument against this was that rape could be discussed without the horrific details of this girl (still in a coma) being sent worldwide. I asked for him think of this girl and her family and have just a little respect to their privacy at an unimaginable devastating time for them. The girl later died of her injuries.
This is where I met his friends
I was attacked by his followers for this. No matter to me. I didnât agree with them or him on this and passionately tried to get across my views on how his discussion about rape did not need to include these details on a particular case. Quite quickly through these exchanges that I began to see the other side of the celebrity courting preacher. He did not follow me and never has. He took it upon himself to send a direct message to me asking for me to be nice to his friends and telling me I used to be a good person and had obviously got in with the wrong crowd. (Thatâs you Nick).
Intimidation
I donât use my real name on twitter, not because I want to be anonymous but just because I didnât think it was a requirement. As you my follower will know, I post everything I think so no real secret to who I am. It was when he wrote to me calling me Emma (my name) I had to stop and think for a moment.
He then proceeded to post a picture of a Dorset sunset (harmless you may think) and said that I would enjoy this as it was somewhere he and his family went camping. I had never had this conversation with him. The only logic to this was that he went back through my timeline to about June when I had posted details of a camping trip I had made.
Actions of a sane man? He then posted my full name on twitter. I assumed that he had found my linkedIn account which I never used but contained all my details, name work place etc. I have never stood down to a bully, never. But who was this man? I didnât know and felt exposed. Classic bully boy tactics to create fear by using intimidating actions. I was labelled a troll (I didnât really know what that meant at the time) I thought he was referring to my short stature and hairy toes.
I contacted Hampshire police, rather apologetically and embarrassed that I was in this situation. I did not make a complaint simply asked their advice. They said to stop contact with him, I assured them I would and did. He had not done anything criminal so they could not do anything. I felt stupid for letting myself be exposed in this way and angry that he would carry on with his offensive and degrading rubbish. Oh, sorry I forgot to say that he then began posting tweets that western women were more likely to be raped due to the way we dress.
Back to subject, It was after this that I was then contacted by Hampshire police. They wanted to come and interview me. I had to then explain to my manager what had happened as I did not know why the police wanted to see me.
Police interview
They basically asked me what had happened looked at the tweets and told me that they would have a word with him. I had not made any complaint and thought it was a valuable lesson learnt. It was not until they were ready to leave that I realised that I had not asked why they had come to speak to me. I asked if they knew who he was and they said they did, very well it seemed. I never followed up, didnât feel the need. I had stopped interacting with him and thought that was that. Low and behold a couple of months later at  9.50pm a knock on my door, two police officers wanting to talk to me about Mo. He had made an accusation of me harassing and making obsessive contact. This complaint was made on 3rd February 2013 about tweets between 24th November and 19th December 2012. Iâll let you do the maths.
I have not interacted with him since and have made a year!
I have wanted to tell my side of this for ages and didnât have the foresight to screen grab all his tweets and post them like he does, expertly out of context.
I would like to say a big thank you to all those that supported me at that time. You were all great and you will never know how much I appreciated your messages. I have been fortunate enough to engage with a lot of his âvictimsâ (for want of a better word) for that Mo, thanks! This is just my story and there are a lot of other thatâs have been reported to employers, had police complaints and receive threatening phone calls to their work place.
(added later as I could not have put it better myself!)
Twitter the weird and wonderful world!
 Rude Girl (updated 27/12/13)













