The James Corden Debacle

The past couple of days have certainly been an interesting experience in my continuing love affair with Twitter.

I perceive myself to be no more than a standard tweeter. I am, genereally, neither overly controversial nor mind-numbingly boring. I tweet about my life in general and occasionally comment on popular culture (a.k.a "what's on the telly")...although, this is far and few between as I tend to make little time to sit down and watch the television (I have better things to do than watch some of the shit that is broadcast to us and often get offended at how unintelligent and simple to please TV producers believe the viewing public are...note "The Magician" on BBC One last weekend!!).

I had 180 followers prior to the 'Cordengate Saga' and I like to think that I've forged some kind of 'online friendship' or 'online acquaintanceship' (in case 'friendship' is taking it a little too far!) with several of the tweeters with whom I have fairly frequent contact.

I don't look up to any celebrities and have little interest in what they're doing. The few celebrities that I have chosen to follow have normally been 'unfollowed' shortly after due to their being rather dull. They're too busy either replying to obsessive fans, promoting new material or ensuring that they don't say anything too controversial so as not to create a media furore or get sued (like the unfortunate Courtney Love). On the whole, 'celebrities' are generally quite boring to follow and I have little interest in celebrity culture.

Instead, I prefer to follow journalists, music-related tweeters (such as Pop Justice, who I find to be constantly interesting and witty to follow) and 'real people' who I believe to lead interesting lives or have similar interests to myself.

On Thursday, I was going about my day as normal and discovered the news that James Corden had signed a contract to host the Brit Awards for the next three years. My immediate reaction was, for whatever reason,...*roll my eyes and cringe*. Thus, commenting on it as anybody else may have done, I tweeted "As if the Brit Awards weren't bad enough, they just got a whole lot worse. I despise James Corden". Nobody commented on what I had said and I proceeded as normal with the remainder of my day - no biggie.

Then, I got an e-mail sent directly to my BlackBerry. Then another. Then another and another and another and another. They were Twitter notifications that I had new followers. Obviously, I was left bemused by my sudden influx of followers. I recall my last tweet had been "Would you rather regret the thing you did or the things you didn't do?"...my initial thought was that somebody must have retweeted it and it caught a few people's attention (we all know how lots of Twitter users have an unusual obsession with thought-provoking or motivational quotes - see the daily Top Tweets as evidence).

I logged onto Twitter, visited my retweets and discovered the truth...James Corden had 'retweeted' my tweet claiming to "despise" him (I didn't even know he was on Twitter).

I won't talk about why he sits searching his name on Twitter and reading through what people think of him - it's all rather self-indulgent or incredibly insecure, I'm not sure which applies in this case. Plus, as a TV personality, you'd surely expect people to either love you or hate you. He claims to be a 'shocked' by it. But, really, I am very cynical about this. If I was in the public eye, I'd be quite clear from the start that some people won't get me. That's a given. Few people can be loved by all. One usually has to die in order to achieve this status.

I suffered a torrent of abuse from his fans for 24 hours. It was hilarious for the first few hours. I was in complete disbelief but it made for a very funny and interesting read. I'm sorry to say it, but people can be incredibly sad and far too involved with celebrity culture - these people need to take a look at their lives and see where it's going wrong. I had a large number of messages simply calling me a "twat" or a "knob". All for what? Having an opinion that they didn't agree with? I was obviously mislead in my belief that England was a modern, democratic society where freedom of thought and free speech were fundamental human rights. I chose not to reply to any of them. I wasn't lowering myself to their levels and I certainly wasn't entering into arguments with people over James Corden. I care too little about him to waste such energy.

Now, for the use of the word "despise". I have a few comments to make on this. "Despise" does appear, in hindsight, to be a little strong. I do not despise James Corden. However, I also refuse to apologise. There's a saying that 'hate is a strong word'. However, this doesn't stop people, including myself, claiming to hate something that, in reality, they just don't like that much. The severity in the use of the word 'hate' has been lost over the years. People do not just use it in order to portray a feeling of extreme and intense emotional dislike, anger or hostility. If somebody claims to 'hate pizza', I doubt they feel overly hostile towards pizza. It is in this very same context that I used the word 'despise'.

How could I possibly actually detest, despise or hate a gentleman that I do not know? I merely do not appreciate him as a TV personality. I believe he was great in Gavin and Stacey (although, I only saw a couple of episodes myself). However, with the few programmes that I have seen him on, I have found him to be (harsh but true) either annoying or arrogant. The last time he presented the BRIT's with Matt Horne and Kylie Minogue, I couldn't continue watching it. He simply does not entertain me and I am entitled to be of that opinion. My dislike of him as a TV personality has absolutely no reflection on him as a person. Unless I knew him, I could never comment on him as a person.

Many of his 'fans' responded to me by stating that I simply shouldn't watch it. But, they missed the point entirely. I won't be watching the BRIT Awards and I was never planning on watching the BRIT Awards. I simply made a flippant comment in passing to my followers, most of whom didn't care less. I didn't direct it at his personal Twitter account and had no knowledge that he was even on Twitter. People claimed I had done it to "make the news" or to "get attention". But, really, when you look at the facts, I think it's quite obvious that I had no idea anybody would read it other than my few followers.

Had James Corden read the comment and simply chosen to ignore it, he wouldn't have created such a fuss. I mean, the response by the media was ridiculous to say the least. Somebody tweeted me to inform me that a news article about the situation which directly quoted my tweet, had been featured as the main headline on yahoo.co.uk and said article had, when I visited it, received 884 comments (many of which were unnecessarily nasty towards James Corden on a personal level)! Why do people care so much!?! It's all a bit too pathetic and laughable.

I would ask why James Corden felt the need to retweet the comment? Was he really that offended? There were far worse things said on Twitter than what I said. Or was it his intention to create some publicity for himself and the BRIT awards? Moreover, perhaps he had a good idea that I would be subject to a torrent of abuse from his fans and condones such behaviour towards people?

Nevertheless, I would also thank him. It's been quite a fun two days... ;-)