Professional Boxer Gets Trolled On Twitter, Shows Up At Guy's House

from the for-whom-the-bell-trolls dept

Sadly, for my purposes at least, internet trolls aren't always as entertaining as the antics of On press Inc. In fact, often times childish and uncreative trolling can produce some really unfortunate results. In particular, I'm recalling the twitter troll whose efforts culminated in a SWAT team and TV crew showing up at the wrong guy's house. That story aside, there is a certain amount of truth to the notion that anonymity can spark horrific behavior, with keyboard cowboys feeling safe in saying incredibly hurtful things to people. Twitter couples that occasion with a connection to public figures, allowing those who wish to, to engage in trollish and hurtful behavior with the rich and famous. Typically, those attempts are shrugged off by targets, and often times the shrugging off is done by whichever PR team is handling the celebrity's Twitter feed. Those that man their own Twitter posts can always use the helpful "block" button to keep the worst aggressors at bay.

Or you can go the Curtis Woodhouse route, which is to sleuth your way to finding the street the troll lives on and go hunting. And if any trolls out there don't think this is a scary enough prospect on its own, consider that Woodhouse is a professional boxer. To be fair to the troll, his tweets aren't the worst I've seen:

@woodhousecurtis Haha u lost u silly mug fight a 10 year old next time if u want to actually win u waste of spunk

— the master (@jimmyob88) March 11, 2013

And:

@woodhousecurtis Whats funny u put so much effort in sacrificed all that time and failed to defend your mickey mouse title #wasteofspunk

— the master (@jimmyob88) March 11, 2013

As I noted, certainly not nice, but not unlike the kind of thing we see in our own comments section from time to time. I'm not particularly sure what this guy thought he was getting out of antagonizing a professional boxer on Twitter, but I can be certain he didn't think this was going to happen.

Unfortunately for the troll, Woodhouse decided that he wasn't going to take such abuse sitting down. Somehow, he managed to discover what street his antagonist lives on, and he set out to pay him a visit while mercilessly live-tweeting his trip.

Oops. Woodhouse live-tweeted all the way up to parking on the guy's street, indicating that he was "coming over for a brew" and asking anyone who knew to tell him what number house he lived at, so that he wouldn't have to "knock on every door." Predictably, the troll first went silent, and then moved on to the kind of apologies reserved for someone who knows they are about to meet a pissed off pugilist face to face.

Now, it would be quite easy to side with Woodhouse here and think that scaring the hell out of a troll would be a satisfying thing. But that would be short-sighted and stupid. Woodhouse is a professional athlete and a public persona and, if he wants to continue that career, he needs to learn pretty quickly that there are people out there who are going to say mean things. That's what the "block" button is for. In my mind at least, tracking down a member of the tweeting public instead only makes him look like a loon. Additionally, I would have to think that it makes him a prime target for future trolling.

Filed Under: curtis woodhouse, feeding trolls, trolling