The 100 Worst People On Twitter

@piersmorgan

#ImStartingWithTheManInTheMirrorImAskingHimToChangeHisWays

I cannot do this entry justice. I’m paralysed by choice here. You are asking me to, in the space of a blog post most people could read during their morning coffee break, to explain every single thing wrong with Piers Morgan on Twitter? It’s like being tasked with producing a 500-word précis of Toynbee’s “A Study of History”. We are only going to scratch the surface of a man here who deserves severe lacerations.

Let us look at specific incidents. In July this year, a 21-year-old woman with about three followers asks the question “Is Wimbledon always held in London?” Piers directs his 2.7 million followers towards mocking the poor girl, despite the fact that Wimbledon has only been held in London for the past 50 years (Wimbledon was part of Surrey before this). After the woman in question has been hounded off Twitter by thousands of people calling her a “fucking moron”, Piers says he “doesn’t feel bad” about authorising this mass punching down, as she refused to go on his TV show and accept his apology.

Piers on athletics. You would have thought the Olympics were patriotic enough in the first place. It’s a month of people waving their flags about and cheering on their fellow countrymen as they set about crushing Johnny Foreigner. Piers, drinking tea from a Union Jack teapot at his home in a different country, declared this not enough. He spent the entire Olympics castigating any victorious British sportsman who, despite giving it their all and sacrificing themselves for triumph on a global stage, didn’t sing a song about an 86-year-old German woman loud enough.

Piers on team sport. It’s such a cliché that Arsenal fans have violent swings between a superiority complex and a Chicken Little belief that the sky is falling. Piers manages to do both of these things at exactly the same time. Every football message board in the country has a thread dedicated to detailing Morgan’s outbreaks every time Arsenal have the temerity to concede a goal, so we won’t repeat those here. However, his outburst when Robin van Persie moved to Manchester United was something special. He said Arsenal should never sell their best player to their “number one rivals” (Arsenal have finished within nine points of Man Utd once in the past seven seasons); that Van Persie is a “mercenary” for moving on (because we all remember RvP coming up through the Arsenal youth system); and that Samir Nasri is “no longer Arsenal’s most loathsome ex-player” (well no, that’s repeat felon Peter Storey). Morgan then called for the immediate chairmanship of Alisher Usmanov, a man who has a perfectly clean personal history and impeccable character references.

It’s not just football, though. Morgan’s cheerleading for Kevin Pietersen has been written about by people who know much more about colonialpaddle than I do. Let’s just say it resembles a father repeatedly writing letters to his son’s PE teacher asking him why he’s not playing up front for the school team.

Piers Morgan once lost a Twitter argument to Toure. There are creatures that crawl underneath the paving slab in my back garden that could win an argument with the “Everest College version of Cornel West”, and Morgan somehow contrives to lose one.

We can list so much here, you undoubtedly have your favourite Piers Morgan online idiocy. The clashes with Rihanna and Lily Allen, the painful “banter” with England international footballers, the “History Today”-style run ins with Alan Sugar… even as I was writing this he retweeted someone calling him an intellectual for knowing who Otto von Bismarck is. If you’re on a Junior Trivial Pursuit answer card, you’re not an intellectual concept. Pro-tip.

Should he be higher? Possibly. Would Piers himself say he should be higher? Certainly. And that’s why he’s down in the mid-20s. Piers Morgan wants to be hated for being an iconoclast, for standing against the status quo, for being brave enough to voice unpopular opinions. Instead, everyone hates Piers Morgan for being a self-involved gobshite who knows absolutely nothing about modern sport and celebrity and yet insists on speaking about both at great lengths. And to think people say the public are bad judges of character…

Sample Tweets

“Royal Wedding, Arsenal beat Manchester United, Bin Laden killed. #bestweekendever?”

“@Lord_Sugar Susan Boyle, biggest singing star in world right now. Stuart Baggs, biggest imbecile in world right now. BGT 1, Apprentice nil”

“@georgemichael never mind all the banter. It’s about time George was on Life Stories. Come on George.”