Twitter Trouble

Spike Lee settles with the Florida couple whose address he retweeted:

An elderly couple has reached a settlement with Spike Lee after the pair said they had to leave their Florida home after the director help spread a Twitter posting listing their address as that of the man who shot an unarmed teen.

[snip]

“He was really kind,” Elaine McClain said. “And when he called us, you could just tell he really felt bad about it. And it was just a slip, and I just know that he really, really has been concerned.”

Sounds like that ended reasonably well. All I have to say about it is that Twitter is a dangerous thing. It’s so easy to fire off things in the heat of the moment that you will later come to regret in a big way. Blogging is risky for the same reason (this I know!), but boy, Twitter is toxic for hotheads — and most of us have at least one thing over which we lose our cool. I bet this was an expensive lesson for Spike Lee. If someone had tried to hurt those old people, he never would have gotten over it. All over pushing a single button in a moment of high emotion.