That’s what someone wrote to me on Twitter yesterday. Ugh. Doesn’t it make you want to barf? What’s most annoying about people who use pathetic, weaselly phrases like this one (normally as a means of eliciting sympathy from their pocket band of social media fucktard sycophants) is that they normally take the “bad words” completely out of context.

Now, I’m not going to go into the conversational context any more than necessary, because that particular debate is over, and he and I have kissed and made up. But I am citing his tweet as an example of how not to conduct yourself in a public discussion.

Firstly, I never used the word “idiot”. (In fact, I hardly ever do. I much prefer “moron”.) I said “Are they stupid?”, referring to people who engage in certain behaviours. Not the same thing.

Secondly, I never called him a retard. I said something of the order “If you do x, it makes you look retarded.” Again, not the same thing.

There’s a nasty little sleight of hand going on here, changing an adjective used about someone’s behaviour into a noun describing them. I think most people are smart enough to see the difference between “Your behaviour is retarded” and “You’re a retard”, because they’re very different things. Ask a libel lawyer or forum moderator.

Think about the difference in connotative meaning between the two. On the one hand, you’re saying someone is acting in a foolish way. (This harmless enough usage has become especially prevalent in recent years after widespread adoption in America.) On the other, you’re saying they’re mentally deficient (and, you may think, being highly disrespectful to disabled people in the process).

But just because most people can see through such nonsense doesn’t make it cool to play silly tricks: someone who sees your response out of context, and who hasn’t seen the whole conversation, might take it at face value.

It’s not authentic. Hence, it’s not cool.

What is it about some people that makes them come out with crap like this? Is it a way of closing down the debate when they know they’re in the wrong? A way of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat? Making their enemy look like the bad guy (this one is used against Right-wing journalists all the time)? Or is it just a manifestation of a generally smug and superior demeanour?

Whatever it is, it annoys the hell out of me. Neither mindlessly and meaninglessly repeating “I respect your opinion”, nor deliberately and disingenuously twisting your opponents words to make them seem more offensive than they really were, makes the debate go away.

It just makes you look retarded.

I just woke from a nightmare that lasted all night. Literally all night: I woke at 4am in a cold sweat, went back to sleep and the whole thing began again. I was trapped in a huge house trying to stop a wedding from happening and trying to escape. There were guns and dogs and someone a bit like Heathcliff trying to stop me. And the whole thing was replete with “Oh my God, I’m still in the dream” moments.  I am genuinely shaken.

I’ve never had an anxiety dream before. At the moment I’m re-reading The Monk, The Castle of Otranto and The Mysteries of Udolpho. I think they’re getting inside my brain. At least, I hope that’s all it is. I can’t handle another night like that.

Just had to get that out there.

I often wake in the middle of the night, with what I imagine at the time to be a game-changingly insightful or brilliant train of thought suspended in mid-air in front of me. I’m immmediately gripped by panic, worried that I might lose it if I don’t get it down. So I flip open my MacBook and start typing furiously. When I’m done, I get back in to bed, and am usually asleep again within a few minutes.

I have about three hundred of these frantically-recorded night-time memos now. Here’s one of them.

How bda could things get if social networking turned nasty?
the major engine of destructon could be the recession
in a recessuibm cult-0liuke cgroupd form around certaub individuals
exciting at first
as in evey pyramid scheme, the btrsk poiny srrives
how could beple use twitter to wreak havoc in the sreets
could Teitter be used as an instument of ctimr, ettort,m  twitter
rumors srtrrt of a salr in an oxford st sotore which is mnot relas big dicounts ptomised
rivl stores employd twittered to =do it
talk of huge surprisie discounts
certain people hav been given tweets with info
some staff in on it – believe it
ma7ybe eve =n some of the management
discount not materialise
riot
 
“city markry guru”
usese twitter to broadcast predicutions
aciting oon inside informatiob first 2 times
third time del talking down stocks so he canbuy at t tht loest point
 
How Twitter could spiral out of control
Factional at present, bit mpt int he sense of occoping campes: thse are veast interlocoking netweorks ofr like and lyalties that a re sometiges inf conflict.
“I really like him, as a person, but I read he blog vbery fght qinf
fractiuring of elleigances eeven in 1to1 peronsal reaptionshops
 
beceuase breviously your 1on1 partner got jut oner verion of you – now they get the whole public perona
I becomes impossible to tell a lie. Oj e slip, a tweet from the bous as ou’re waiting to arrive t your destination, and the firends your ditchingt will lnow what they were dumped for

• Are you an internet start-up CEO in the North East of England?
• Have you worked in technology in the North East for a while?
• Do you know the technology sector well?
• Do you have experience of starting out, trying to get funding and asking for help and support?
• Do you have a story to share – good or bad – about any publicly-funded bodies in the North East?
• Do you have an opinion about the level of support and access to expert knowledge in the region?

Answered ‘yes’ to any of the above? Good. Then it’s you I’m after.

Now, sit yourself down and pour yourself a cup of tea. Because I want you to do something for me. Something brave.

Part Two of my series for TechCrunch Europe on tech start-ups in the North East will look at the quality of institutional support and resources available to start-ups, and whether some well-intentioned development programs are doing more harm than good to the local digital economy.

That means I need you to tell me about your experiences with Business Link, Codeworks, One North East, North East Finance, NorthStar and everyone else. I want to know everything: the good, the bad, and the hideously ugly. And I want you to tell me on the record (your name will printed next to the comments you make).

Visit this TechCrunch post and leave a comment if you’d like to help. Feel free to tell me of your experiences anonymously (Chatham House) or off the record (in which case I won’t repeat them at all) as well, but please indicate which it is clearly at the top of your message, or break your message into clear sections. Alternatively, you can call or email me privately (full contact info at the bottom of this page).

This is politically and financially sensitive stuff. I’m aware of that. But if you’d like to have your say (and who know, maybe even make a positive difference to the long-term economic health of the North East), get in touch.

I recently “upgraded” the Google Apps installation on a domain I own to “Standard” (ie, I identified myself as the owner of the domain to unlock the Dashboard). That means users are now centrally managed – by me.

So here’s the problem. Before I upgraded, there were several pending invitations to colleagues on the same domain. These disappeared when I upgraded, and, since then, I’ve been unable to re-add these users. I get this. And yes, it’s been more than five days.

Has anyone else experienced this before? Can you help?