I personally think that what domino is saying is right. I feel bad if i tag him in more than 3 or 4 tweets a day! That would be an excessive amount i think. If your having a convo and tagging him in that can be different but tweets that are directly to him i think maybe 1 or 2 a day.
I can see what your saying about deleting this topic. It is just alerting people and encouraging them to tweet him even more. Then again though it is good for those who dont have twitter so that can get updated on what damien is tweeting.
Its a difficult one but he is new to this attention and we dont want to scare him off......im not really one to talk i guess :/ xx
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Iv decided. I'm only going to tweet him if he tweets. And only once! also tweet him if it's important (Hardly ever) and i shall #DamienMolony when i want to @ him :) x
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Anyway, must dash. Friend about to kill lots of people.
I agree with all that you're saying Domino, but I don't see why that should be a reason to remove this topic? It's useful to keep track of when Damien tweets, especially for members who don't have twitter... It's just a place to read his tweets, just like his twitter page itself, and it's not stalking/creepy fangirling to just read his tweets right? Only excessive replying to his tweets would be..
I am not allowed Twitter at work, so this topic is useful as I can still have a #blueshirt alert, but by getting it from here, it is sent to an e-mail that I use for work.
I agree with Lau, I like this topic, but I can see from today's posts how it could be seen as encouraging fans. But by keeping this conversation here, we are letting people know that we are aware of the pros and cons of having this topic. I do wish more people would take the @ off his name though and use #
I am sure he is fully aware of what's going on on Twitter, otherwise he would not post so much. There are times, I think, he may be having a joke with us or even at us. Sitting in a restaurant, having a meal with his mates he's probably said something like "look, I'm going to take a photo of my plate/coffee and put it on Twitter. Just look what'll happen". There are times when I don't want to reply to his tweets, but feel I have to as everyone else has
He's only been on Twitter since last year and he started off tweeting just for friends, but it's obvious that he's mainly tweeting for his fans now.
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Hi Laura, thanks for your comments, interesting. I dunno - it would be nice to think he could tweet for his friends too and 'fame' should not really take that away from a person. those tweets i don't feel i have a right to 'butt in'. but yeah i guess the food tweets are open to the whole twitter floor! they are fun as well :)
By the way, am not saying i believe noone should tweet Damo! or that we don't have a right to a fandom. that is not what i am saying at all! i am just talking about balance, awareness and discernment. that is all. and i have found this conversation very helpful indeed!
The alerts posted to each other on tweeter were started not as an instruction for everyone to tweet him but more of a "oh heck, he's online watch what you're saying" as he often appeared in our timelines when we were mid conversation about him (without tagging him I hasten to add). We often got the feeling we were being watched, unlikely I know, but the alert was fun all the same.
As has been pointed out the alerts on here are useful for those of us who don't have or can't always get on twitter to see what Damien has been posting. This is purely out of interest, yes we are all interested in what he does - why else would we be here, and not out of a need to reply to every comment he makes.
I believe that most of his tweets are generalised postings that to my eyes look as though they are aimed at the fans. He will expect to get some replies & I think he quite likes it. You often see he will post more than one tweet a day when he his first hasn't seen many replies - or at least that is my interpretation from what I see in my timeline. This doesn't however mean that we should constantly tweet him, or anybody that we happen to be a fan of. He is not our "mate" & we have no right to fill his mentions everyday, especially with some of the inappropriate things I have read.
As for the "how many times is appropriate to be tweeting him?" well I think that this is a bit of an odd question really. I think we should just all remember not to tweet rubbish at him for no other reason than we wanted to tag him in. I tend to stick to just replying to the tweets he makes that I can think of an appropriate reply to, how many times I reply depends entirely upon the tweet. For example I know I replied about 3 or 4 times to his tweet about being back in his favourite costume as this was begging for a number of sarcastic answers, but I haven't replied to either of today's tweets as the first didn't really warrant a response & the second was to wish a friend happy birthday.
I'm babbling now but the point i'm trying to make is that ultimately we have to remember he is a human being, who like any other we should treat with respect, so don't be a pain on his twitter mentions and when you reply do so with respect.
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"You know you remind me of a conquest back in Madrid 1784. I wooed her with a thousand tulips."
*Sighs* I some how now feel stupid. I tweet him a lot. I'm an obsessive fan. And i can admit .. some times i tag him in rubbish. Come on. Shoot me. Is it so much of a crime.
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Anyway, must dash. Friend about to kill lots of people.
Domino I completely agree with you. I don't want to rehash things and I really hope my comment doesn't make anyone angry because that it truly not my intention, but I am glad you spoke up about this.
I think before we go nuts over-tweeting him or saying certain things to him we should put ourselves in Damien's shoes and really (truthfully) ask ourselves if we would want to be treated that way by a complete stranger. How would we feel being mentioned in hundreds of tweets every single day so that it became difficult to read our @mentions? Do you think your behavior is grounds for him blocking you? Would you block someone who tweeted you obsessively? I've done it and I'd do it again in a heartbeat because I don't owe anyone on twitter anything - and I'm not even a celebrity!
How would you feel receiving sexually themed tweets from someone you don't know? How do you think this type of behavior would affect your significant other? In case you didn't know Damien does have a girlfriend. How would you feel if someone tweeted your boyfriend or husband repeatedly and admitted to being obsessed with him or that they were sexually attracted to him? I don't know about you but I wouldn't like that at all!
I think the bottom line is that we need to be more respectful and think before we tweet. As for removing the alert thread for when Damien tweets, I say if it enables any of us to act inappropriately then yes it should be removed. Again, I hope I didn't offend anyone with my comment! I've enjoyed chatting with you ladies and using this forum and I would hate to think I upset anyone.
@Lili: Amen sista! I think you hit the nail on the head with all that! I too have had to block people for over tweeting me, so I wouldn't want to cause someone else to block me. I have seen his name (with the '@' on it) in many a twitter conversations where I find myself thinking "they should have changed/gotten rid of that about 10 tweets back". Also, I had never thought about the whole significant other thing. But you make a really good point! If someone on twitter, even a good friend, was posting @ me anything that could be taken sexually or inappropriately, my boyfriend would flip!
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It's a really nice look you've got going on there :wink:
thank you Lilli, for your thoughtful comment, and continuing with the line of thought..it makes me feel glad I did speak out and far less alone / freakish about doing so. Absolutely, Damien is a person with his own life just like the rest of us and there is a tendency in fandom to forget that, it is that false sense of familiarity that twitter as a platform creates, and makes it very very hard to remain grounded in that reality...the bigger picture is for me is that I abhor the whole celeb thing, that hey are suddenly a public commodity, just because of the job they chose and in many cases were born to do ..it was not a choice to become part of the celebrity culture and just because a celebrity culture exists does not mean as a fandom you have to collude with it. the opposite in fact, we have a responsibility not to perpetuate that culture.
your comment about blocking is an important one: any person on twitter can block another user, without the other person knowing. I had forgotten this - lol maybe we are all blocked and so when we @ Damien he doesn't get to see his replies at all. I certainly hope he feels he can do that if he feels harrassed or unhappy with excessive tweeting from fans, but it would be sad scenario if that happened across the board to all his fans just because some were over the top. what needs to remembered is that anything with an @ in front of it appears in his "interactions" feed on his personal account.
Becca It looks like we are also in agreement..and the question about 'how many times is appropriate' was of course abstract but intended as a catalyst for thought and discussion - a specific question like that can be more powerful than just discussion of concepts!
If we were going to take this argument all the way to its extreme we could go down the road of 'fandoms' in themselves, as opposed to just being a fan enjoying the work of your fave actor without the need to publicly discuss of have fan culture around it, contribute to the behaviour we are concerned about. But I think fandom will always exist and doing them the right way is valuable in that context.
Just want to check..does anyone think as fans we should not be tweeting Damien at all? I don't think anyone is saying this are they? although i do usually feel awkward, if Damien mentions filming it IS exciting to me and it is ok to show fan support that way i think, as long as it is not OTT in content or frequency.
so to conclude- we all agree about respectful, aware, discerning tweeting (and fandom!) and that if this topic contributes to any kind of worrying fan behaviour it should be removed. But, a couple of people have said they find it helpful having the alerts here. I am still undecided..so maybe we do a vote.
Lol apologies again for this kind of heavy navel gazing stuff..... but it is important innit!
As the creator of the 'blue shirt alert' I have to say that i agree with Domino and Lilli.
I enjoy reading his tweets when they appear, just those little insights in what he's thinking, what he's seen in the cinema or on stage and (mostly) what he's been eating or drinking. I don't tweet him, or if i do, it's in passing, like I said i think in Glastonbury that there were a lot of quaint coffee shops and it made me think of @--- (insert his name). I do respond to a lot of his tweets but they're respectful, usually in 'have a great weekend', 'have a lovely day' 'hope all is well'. etc etc. I'm also a married woman too, i wouldn't dream of tweeting anything to him that could be construed as suggestive in that way. A bit of banter is okay but you must know where to draw the line. As it happens, he doesn't respond personally to anyone, or hasn't done for a while. I read somewhere that he told someone that if he did then everyone would expect him to respond to them and he felt it wouldn't be fair. Fair enough, he has a point, he has over nine thousand followers.
Damien has fans of all ages, shapes and sizes. I'm sure he gets a chuckle out of some of the tweets that he does receive but i do not doubt that if any of them get too close to the mark then he wouldn't hesitate to block and there are some scary people out there in general.
He's a lovely young man at the start of his career, i'm just enjoying reading what he's talking about, what is affecting him and such like. I hope that some of the excessive fans (and i'm not talking about anyone here before WW3 breaks out) don't scare him away from Twitter.
-- Edited by rubyrosettared on Tuesday 21st of August 2012 08:12:58 PM
Recently iv only tweeted quite a lot of people saying "Hope your doing okay! Stay safe Xx" ... And that goes to every one :\ ... celeb wise. Including Damien ... ryan , Kate , Michael and some others. and on weakends i normally tweet them "Have a great weekend!" And at the end of the weekend "Hope you had a good weekend :) Xx" .... Iv cut down on my stupid tweets :3 X
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Anyway, must dash. Friend about to kill lots of people.
Hi Lisa, thanks for commenting, it is good to get everyone's opinion like this.
Yes Damien's popularity and career has been on a steep trajectory from the start - the fandom thing must be a little strange _- but I agree, I am sure he enjoys the majority of the tweets directly sent his way. I had forgotten about the blocking thing until Lilli mentioned it. So maybe no need to be misplacedly overprotective.
I can remember when i first started following him on Twitter his followers were in the hundreds (somewhere in the three hundreds if memory serves) and the last i checked it had exploded to well over nine thousand and will probably climb again during series 5. I can imagine the sudden surge of attention to his every tweet could be a bit disconcerting.
He's just tweeted earlier, seems he has today off, he's been to see a movie :)
Yep, there is no doubt his popularity will expand even more in the near future!
Feeling the need to clarify today that I (and noone else in this topic) is saying that fans should not tweet Damien at all, just that we all need to be respectful and discerning, and aware and grounded.
Haha yeah i rememberd when i started following him :') he had just about 3,000 followers and pretty quickly they shot up to 9,000 and above ;D i was so proud xD mwuhaha!! .... Xx
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Anyway, must dash. Friend about to kill lots of people.
Sometimes we all tweet things before we think first....been there done that....as they say ! But there's tweeting and there's tweeting if you know what i mean, some get excessive some don't. I'm sure Damien knows where the block button is if anyone gets excessive or offensive. I've tweeted him, he's never replied or RT'd me and i only reply to something if i find it reletive to want to. Like today he's tweeted a few, i replied to the one about the BH script pic ! My reply ''ooo let me see let me see lol actually no i want to be suprised !'' lol
Damien Molony 
