Like many social media site one affordance of Twitter is that it allows people to create an online persona; people can re-invent themselves and make their voices be heard and no-one even has to know who you really are. However people take this affordance one step too far, and use Twitter to troll celebrities and other users. Trolling is an act of anti-social behaviour on the internet with the sole purpose of creating conflict between users. An example of a Twitter troll is '@plasticbieber' who's Twitter account is dedicated to Justin Bieber and sending hate to boy-band One Direction. '@plasticbieber's' many tweets include racism, hatred, bigotry etc. which are all commonly found in trolling. ''@OneDirection can you please put your ugly fans back in their cage? or do i have to call animal control seriously..'' is just one example of her tweets. By including One Direction's user name in her tweet she has made sure that this will appear in their 'notifications' which increase One Direction's chance of seeing it; although this is another affordance of Twitter this is also an example of how it can be abused. Including user name's in tweets is one convention of Twitter and allows users to talk directly to each other, yet another affordance of the site.
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