While I was on a train this afternoon I started looking at Twitter on my phone. Out of interest I did a search for ‘Tourettes’ and found that someone had just tweeted about a woman shouting ‘Biscuit’ and ‘Happy Christmas’ on a train. The tweet wasn’t positive and I could tell from what she was writing that we were in the same carriage.

I tweeted back but didn’t get a response. Instead, she tweeted a couple more times about me in an equally disparaging tone.

I talked this through with Leftwing Idiot and Laura later and they both felt strongly that I shouldn’t get drawn into negative exchanges like these. Leftwing Idiot pointed out that I was vulnerable to being assaulted if someone didn’t like what I was saying. He reminded me that I’m easy to spot.

I completely take the point and will be much more careful in the future. Twitter has made some amazing conversations possible, as I’ve explained before. But I’m not interested in getting involved in exchanges with people who aren’t being thoughtful.