While scouring the spiky undergrowth of Twitter the other day, I noticed a vicious, but unheralded fight going on between two of its rising young stars from the UK. This wasn't a battle between Piers Morgan and Bradley Wiggins, RTing its way through Twitter's adult mainstream, this was a fight watched only by the youngest British tweeters. It was the online equivalent of punch up in a playground.@rileyy_69 shhhh batty boy, you wear primark belts, what girl would want you?
— Oll (@_OllyRiley) August 13, 2012
Followers: 142,000+Olly Riley is the bête noire of tween Twitter, the closest thing it has to a troll and a bastard. His online persona is akin to a fading rapper or a paranoid reality TV star, as he starts provocative hashtags and posts pictures of himself with his sexual conquests. He's notorious for getting girls to send pictures to him of themselves wearing knee high socks, and because his appeal is limited to the high school crowd, the results were the kind of thing you'd get your laptop impounded for if you had them in your hard drive. But why so many followers? You see, Olly's popularity is similar to that of serial killers deluged with love letters. Teenage girls and fellow trolls are enamoured by his cruelty.
His aggressive misogyny is the strange counterpoint to his claim of being the Don Juan of NW9. He seems to be constantly angry with women, accusing them of being sluts and then telling them how much he loves them. Looking through his tweets, it's easy to conclude that Olly Riley is troubled by the very existence of an opposite sex. Obviously at his young age (I'm not entirely sure what it is, but pre-20s) nobody has a particularly mature relationship with the people they want to have sex with, but Olly's attitude is a little bit more Andrew Dice Clay than Adrian Mole.Slutty girls deserve to be baited up
— Oll (@_OllyRiley) August 12, 2012
But he also feels the need to announce things that people already know. Poor Olly, he's torn between his need to be controversial enough to get the hits and his desire to be an objective news source. It's what we in journalism call "the Sky News conundrum."To be honest, there's a whole sociological thesis to be written on the phenomenon of Olly Riley, but what's just as interesting are those copycats and hangers-on that he has spawned.Name: Jamie Smith (@J4MIESMITH)After all that time the Olympic flame has just gone out, bye bye London Olympics
— Oll (@_OllyRiley) August 12, 2012
Followers: 24,000+Jamie Smith is one of Riley's closest allies, his trolling consigliore if you will. He's more sensitive than Riley, but also far more unhinged, with a sideline in Drake-esque "I miss you girl, suck my dick" heart pouring. Whereas Riley portrays himself as a Jack The Lad, Jamie's steez veers more towards Basketball Diaries than Football Factory.
To self-serving internet philanthropy:NANDOS IS THE BEST PLACE EVER!
— JAMIE SMITH ✌ (@J4MIESMITH) August 11, 2012
And an endless succession of hater management:Jamie Smith retweets me.. gains 50 followers
— JUST JAKE (@oJ4KE) August 8, 2012
See, Jamie loves to play the victim, he constantly talks about how his entire city (Derby, in case you were wondering) is out to get him, and that the internet is his only refuge from this region-wide bullying. Yet, he also tweets about what cinema he's going to be at. It's a worrying delusion of our times, a man who isn't famous at all pretending to be hounded like the late Diana. The constant retweeting of praise and 24/7 availability suggest that Jamie is a young man who isn't doing much with his life, I suppose in its own, twisted way Twitter is his sanctuary, but it's not a sanctuary from unwanted attention, it's a sanctuary from anonymity and normality."@jamietuckerrr @j4miesmith Aww that's so attention seeking of you" OH FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING CUNT
— JAMIE SMITH ✌ (@J4MIESMITH) August 12, 2012
Followers: 39,000+See that forehead graffiti above? That's not a cruel sleepover prank or a vicious piece of photoshop by a rival, River really has just elected the English language's Most Offensive Word™ as his unofficial moniker. Because, as you'll see, River is clearly a young man with some issues with humanity.
River's a Twitter comedian of sorts, but not the kind of comedian who actually tells jokes. More like the kind who tells blatantly falsified masturbation anecdotes. You probably aren't going to see him on Live at the Apollo any time soon. But maybe he's an anti-comedy genius with a Meta streak? Let's look through his pictures to get a better idea of the man behind the wank stories.Looking through the people that retweet River's scatological haikus, one of the most surprising things you notice is that it's not just his lesser equivalents that share his work. There are a lot of seemingly otherwise decent people who feel the need to share somebody else's story about "wanking in my belly button" or whatever it is today.River's no comedy provocateur, but he tells us something about the popularity of out and out stupidity. Perhaps his fame is symptomatic of a reaction against the Cambridge wordplay of the Grown Up Twitterati and their ilk. While everybody else on Twitter is desperately trying to find new ways to say they dislike David Cameron, River's throwing out shit like this:I Was on a school trip and my mate bought some porn mags and i had a wank into a spar bag and but cum on his nose while he was asleep.
— Cunt (@RiverCrowson) August 13, 2012
River Crowson, ladies and gentlemen. A man who clearly has no time for the Gallagher brothers.Name: Willow (@_WillowProwse)If you have big slug eyebrows ill think you're a massive bellend and ill shave them off while you sleep.
— Cunt (@RiverCrowson) August 13, 2012
Followers: 24,000+Nope, "Willow Prowse" is not the name of a minor Tolkien character with a fan-made Twitter page, but a real-life boy who's become somewhat "Twitter famous." Even more so than other teen celebrities, Willow's fame lies in his hair. To be fair to him, his hair is great, it permanently looks as though he's mid-way through the part of a haircut when the barber asks if you'd like any wax or gel. Like the vainest of Hollywood actors, Willow's favorite thing to do is make himself look ugly, as if saying to the world: "Me at my worst is better than you at your best."
But of course, Willow's preferred medium is Twitter, and the sheer inanity of his work in the field makes Olly Riley look like Chomsky. He's a man who speaks purely in the most basic terms, yet his fans seem to find a profundity in the things he says:there's so many things to smile about, but there's a lot to be sad about
— Willow(@_WillowProwse) August 13, 2012
Whereas Olly Riley and Jamie Smith trade on aggression and pubescent laddiness, Willow Prowse is a more delicate proposition, but one whose endgame is basically the same. He's still self-obsessed and demands attention, he just uses emoticons rather than pictures of his dick to get it. He's Aaron Carter to their Marky Mark.There's a wealth of guys like this out there, from the world famous to the ones with 12 followers. But the reason I focused on these four, is that Twitter is not just the means to an end for them, it's their only medium. You see, most people who try to get favorited tweets on trends are aspiring Huffington Post small-timers or mixtape rappers, but these four are just themselves. They are the small-town disco dancers of Twitter, having to come to terms with the idea that the rest of their life will have very little relevance to their passion. Which is being dicks on the internet.I understand that essentially these are just teenagers who've been given access to a lot of sympathizers and admirers at an age most of us should be dropping bottles off bridges, but there's something actually quite troubling at work here. Without wanting to get all Freakonomics on you, I think guys like this represent the natural conclusion of the internet-bound isolationism so many children are brought up with these days. They're the hazardous by-product of a generation that was told it was better off staying in and taking photos of itself rather than going out to eat mud-pies.@_willowprowse beautiful willow.
— Hannah Steadman (@hannz21) August 13, 2012