Ian Hallard Has Just Posted This On Twitter In Response To Some Unkind Tweets Aimed At Mark. My Aim In

I bawled like a baby!

Sherlock: It’s not a pleasant thought, John. But I have this terrible feeling from time to time that we might all just be human.

John: Even you?

Sherlock: No. Even you. 

Tim Roberts, misogyny & social media conduct

As a social media professional and a theatre fan, it could hardly have escaped my attention that a light technician with The Phantom of the Opera called Tim Roberts quit his job after being disciplined for his conduct on social media. It is an extreme result of some very unpleasant back and forth, but it’s another example of a long line of men receiving backlash after making offensive comments to women. 

It was only in June that Sir Tim Hunt, at a conference in Seoul, remarked that the “trouble with “girls” is three things happen when they are in the lab … you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry” and that scientists should work in gender-segregated labs. The women of the Internet responded with justified anger and, much like Mr Roberts, Sir Hunt resigned from his position at UCL for making offensive remarks. 

The attack on the fangirl is the only acceptable misogyny left 

The tweets that got Tim Roberts into trouble fall into the same offensive category, but his target was a certain type of young woman who often come under attack. While a general swipe at women is enough to set sensors off and rile everyone up, taking a pop at the much maligned fangirl is sadly fair game. But it is arguably the most toxic kind of misogyny. Where young women that are passionate about something are made to feel like they’re wrong and are criticised for being who they are by an older straight white man.

Roberts’ earliest tweets started with an ugly offensive tone:

For clarity, Roberts used the horrific situation with refugees in Calais to offend fans seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet at the Barbican. Quickly following that up with ableism. (A ‘Sunshine Bus’ is the name used for bus trips for young people with special needs, suggesting that those with special needs should be ‘locked up’)

He also took a particularly misogynist swipe at young women:

Edited since publishing to add this gem:

Some women were offended by his comments as they back and forthed with him over his comments about fangirls. However he continued on by calling his haters neo-Nazis:

And advocating that fans should be shot:

Tim Roberts offended the young women he was attacking so much that they forwarded his tweets with a complaint to his employer. Really Useful Theatres (RUT) then took Mr Roberts in for a disciplinary. Roberts quit when faced with this process. 

Should Tim Roberts have been disciplined?

The key question that has emerged as a result of this whole affair is whether Tim Roberts should have been disciplined by his employer for these tweets that he sent on his own time (remember, he did not lose his job, he chose to quit when faced with disciplinary action.)

Roberts, of course, says no. The argument that RUT are suppressing his freedom of speech is one that Roberts and his supporters are running with. It’s his personal Twitter and thus he argues that he can say anything he likes on his own time. He wasn’t attacking the company he was working for and thus, he believes, should have the right to say what he wants. Tim Roberts has also gone as far as to compare his predicament to those Spain, Egypt and Iran, who fought censorship on Twitter to enforce political change. His right to tweet using offensive language, he argues, is comparable to their struggle:

It seems disingenuous to argue that Tim Roberts’ predicament is anything like those of political activists during the Arab Spring. In fact, it’s actually a pretty offensive self-important claim. 

The RUT have argued, according to Roberts, that he brought their brand into disrepute, and that’s where the professional Social Media Director in me comes out. Although Roberts may not have said anything about his employer, he was tweeting in a professional capacity - he was always talking in the context of the industry he works in and thus to potential clients of RUT. All these young women he insulted and offended are theatregoers and thus their potential clients.

Let’s look at it this way, if Roberts had stood outside Her Majesty’s Theatre before work one day and shouted abuse at people walking by and as they purchased tickets, would anyone say that was ok? 

Advice for brands

Social media is a complicated new problem. What can brands do if their employees behave in their personal life in a way that does not align with their ethics? Furthermore, what can brands do if an employee is offending potential clients? This is an absolute minefield, but a sturdy and clear social media policy is absolutely vital. 

Clients are well within their rights to request employees do not use social media to bring their brand into disrepute. A really high profile case of this recently was the appointment of 17 year old Paris Brown as Britain’s youth police and crime commissioner. She was discovered to have sent several offensive tweets the years before her appointment, but was subsequently forced to resign because her values did not align with that of her employer’s.

Some might argue that if you are tweeting in your personal time, it shouldn’t have anything to do with your employer, but legal guidelines provided by Linklaters, a global law firm, state that the cases in tribunal seen so far indicate that “the exact details of how the posting is made are generally less important. For example, there is limited focus on whether it is made in or out of normal working hours. Instead what is important is whether there is a clear connection to work (for example, because of the nature of the posting or naming of the employer) and the impact on the employer.” 

It’s clearly vital for brands to have clear social media guidelines in place for all staff. But, additionally, I recommend professional social media training. As someone that has conducted plenty of social media training sessions for large corporations and their staff in the past, it’s interesting to get those who aren’t familiar with social media into a room and discuss it with them. They may not realise the risks they take when posting on social media, as well they may not understand their own responsibility as an employee. We always look up an attendee’s social media profile prior to the session and screencap their tweets and show them to the room. Believe me, there’s nothing like bringing home how exposed you are than your tweets going up on a screen in a room with your colleagues. It’s not done to embarrass anyone (very few people have anything embarrassing anyway), it’s done to remind you how vulnerable you are when exposing yourself online.

Tim Roberts tweeted to me that he is in charge of Twitter accounts with followers numbering 30,000 (this tweet has since been deleted). 

He feels this gives him some kind of experience and knowledge of social media and how it works. Yet, clearly this isn’t the case. It is a clear example of how organisations with small budgets cut costs by not employing experienced professionals to manage their social media. I would be pretty worried that someone with a similar attitude, in charge of my social media profiles, wouldn’t know how to protect my brand from defamation, contempt of court, libel, wouldn’t know the brand’s responsibility for child safety, ASA advertising law, the important role of PR on social media, and wouldn’t respect the ethics and brand personality in a public space. All things that professionals from social media agencies specialise in and can navigate with confidence without it being the focus of their jobs. 

Sadly, Tim Roberts has probably done very little for his employability now. Everyone knows that employers check public social media accounts when recruiting. He is highly visible and, despite attempts at revising history and deleting tweets, there are many posts correcting his version of events. (Read @losethehours post here as well.)

(Note: If any theatres wish to talk to me about social media training for their staff, specifically tailored for theatre and entertainment, please feel free to get in touch either here, on Twitter or google me.)

I just unlocked the Superfan sticker on GetGlue

238746 others have also unlocked the Superfan sticker on GetGlue.com

You're a Superfan! That's a like and 15 check-ins!

Thank you for that post!

Tim Roberts vs. the Cumberbatch Fandom: a long post

As you all probably have noticed already, a story about how a theatre worker named Tim Roberts got fired/quit for tweeting about Benedict Cumberbatch fans is spreading through the internet. I’ve noticed that some people seem to be taking his side, considering the fact that he has been fired/forced to quit to be an overreaction, or as he would like us to believe, a gross infringement of his free speech rights.

For a clarification, he wasn’t fired, or forced to quit. When faced with a private investigation from his employers, he decided to quit. Why do that if you have done nothing wrong? I’ll leave it out to you to decide.

But why did all this happened? As I’ve been told, he has deleted most of the “offensive” tweets about it, but according to him, this is the reason of all of his misfortunes:

He insists on pointing that this tweet, and only this tweet, is the only reason he got into trouble, and he says so several times on his timeline. If you didn’t know better, you would totally believe this guy’s story and considered it a gross miscarriage of justice, am I right? After all, that tweet is just an observation, that doesn’t contain any foul language. Just a criticism of the way some people behave during live theatre.

Except, dear old Tim isn’t being truthful. That’s not the tweet that got him into trouble. That’s not the reason his employers decided to do a review of his behaviour on social media. And that’s not the reason he decided it was best for him to quit before being investigated either. Dear Tim, being so completely tone-deaf about how incredibly gross, hateful and misogynistic his words are, has deleted some tweets, but the ones that are still on his timeline, will give you an idea of what kind of person he is, and why people got so riled up with his comments:

I am not going to insult your intelligence and point out the obvious. But let me tell you that he’s not the first person to get canned because of hateful speech (Remember Justine?).

Mr. Roberts seems to regard his current predicament as a great injustice, and as a sign that his freedom of speech has been thwarted. But the thing is, freedom of speech does not mean that you can spread hate and nobody has the right to challenge you. Freedom of speech means that you can say whatever you want (as he has rightly done), but it does not protect you from the consequences of your words. It does not mean that anybody who disagrees with you is a bully. And it certainly does not mean that your employers are weaklings that bow under the pressure of the public opinion. As Tim’s employers, the Really Useful Theatre company can be held accountable about the way he and all the people who work with them express themselves on social media. Tim’s words and unjustified attacks on female fans reflect very poorly on RUT, so it’s completely understandable that they would want to get to the bottom of the issue and sever ties with him immediately.

I’ve seen that Tim is not only orchestrating a campaign to tell his very biased side of the story by rewriting history on his Twitter, but he is also contacting members of the press. The Independent has fallen for his excuses, as you can see on their article. Tim has also contacted via his account the Evening Standard, the BBC programme Victoria LIVE, and The Sun, as you can see:

He’s also receiving the help of other like-minded individuals, but the way they are going about it is probably not helping that much Tim’s cause:

I will end up this very long post (sorry, I wanted to get this out of my chest and move on, this man is not worth my time) by pointing out that he is claiming he’s being bullied and threatened. And, he chose this to exemplify his claims:

Does that person sound like a troll to you? or a bully? Because to me it looks like Tim likes to dish on people, but when said people fight back, he cannot take it and starts crying about being the victim of bullies.

About Amanda, I think she simply does not know the whole story. If you go by what Tim says in his timeline, he is a completely innocent victim of evil Cumberfans, just like Amanda and Ben’s wife (according to him, that is). I hope she decides to take a closer look to his timeline and realizes who this guy really is.

ETA:

Thank you to all the people who is sending me links and screencaps to the original tweets that were deleted. The internet never forgets, Tim!

Full text of the interview with Martin Freeman published in the Sunday Times on 24 November 2013. Behind a cut for length.

Read More

I love fall, but when it is getting dark, I wish that the sun is up again...

Earth Art: Out of Africa

The International Space Station’s altitude of about 250 statue miles overlooking the Earth provides a unique vantage point from which I’m able to view our world. Capturing geographical spots for Earth scientific observations is often part of my job here aboard our orbital laboratory. The images from space provide researchers on Earth with key data to better understand the planet.

But photography in space is also an enjoyable hobby. It helps to add some semblance of life balance on the scale of work and life. When you live at work for a year, this balance is very important.

The view across Earth has given me some incredible scenes. But I have most enjoyed photographing Earth with a different eye. Through a zoom lens and with the vantage point of the space station and the ever-interesting canvas of Earth, I’ve produced a series of Earth Art. Some of the most inhospitable places on Earth are also some of the most beautiful from space. The African continent is no exception.  

I recently took this wall-worthy art photo located on the western edge of the Sahara desert at center Mauritania in Northwest Africa. There is a giant quartzite circle called Richat Structure. It is approximately 24 miles across. This volcanic bulge that never erupted and was leveled by erosion makes for interesting Earth Art.

Traveling at 17,500 mph around the globe for nearly a year, I’ve had many opportunities to capture several abstract glimpses of Africa. Here are some of them. Enjoy! 

Oh Oz thank you! And I just laughed so hard that I nearly fell of my stool ;) It is priceless!

This but a tiny piece - the very beginning - of Chapter 16. It is my attempt to make up for the fact that I’m so bad at being timely in the posting of my chapters, even after leaving my readers with the worst cliffhanger ever.

As per usual, I do not own Wicked. However, this...

Jesus, this kind of makes me cry!

Sometimes the internet can be a great place. 

I am frustrated because there is no update for any of my favorite Gelphie stories on fanfiction.net

I am even more frustrated because I don't know how to write my own new chapter and keep staring onto the word document...

And on top of that: I'm sick and can't concentrate properly.

I need something to cheer me up!