The curious case of Rileyy_69

It amazes me how the internet brings out the best and the worst in people. Mostly the worst. The Twitter adventures of Reece Sonny James (aka @Rileyy_69) in the past 24 hours are an excellent case in point.

Yesterday, James was just another idiot shit-for-brains teen, acting the hard man and spouting cack on Twitter and on YouTube. Less than 24 hours later, James is Great Britain's new national hate figure and, if news reports are to be believed, he's been arrested for it.

It all kicked off yesterday afternoon when James decided to take a pot shot at Tom Daley, after his attempt to secure a synchronised diving medal at the olympics went awry. Clearly not one to send expressions of sympathy (or pay attention in English class), James instead opted for:

"@TomDaley1994 you should be ashamed of yourself you let out country down just fuck off"

When that didn't get a reaction, he opted to push even bigger buttons.

"@TomDaley1994 you let your dad down i hope you know that"

In case you don't know, Daley's dad died of a brain tumour earlier this year. James has since claimed that he didn't know this, but it's an obvious lie. The words were designed to hurt like stabs to the ribs, and Daley was clearly not in the mood to ignore them. Minutes later, Daley retweeted the message to his thousands upon thousands of followers.

And, quite literally, all hell broke loose. Within seconds, Team Daley were on the offensive. And, charming as ever, as punctuation shy as usual, James stood his ground.

"@TomDaley1994 sit your ass back down tommy and don't get on a diving board again my little brother could do better absolute waste of space"

“@TomDaley1994 hope your crying now you should be why can’t you even produce for your own country your just a diver anyway a over hyped prick”

However, as though an alternate personality had just become dominant, suddenly there were expressions of remorse for what had just happened.

“@TomDaley1994 I’m sorry mate i just wanted you to win cause its the olympics I’m just annoyed we didn’t win I’m sorry tom accept my apology”

“@TomDaley1994 I’m really sorry :("

“@TomDaley1994 please i don’t want to be hated I’m just sorry you didn’t win i was rooting for you pal to do britain all proud just so upset”

By this point, the name @Rileyy_69 was spreading like wild fire across Twitter. And, believe me, the world was definitely in the mood for a witch hunt. Most of the vitriol was as equally hateful as the bile that James had been spewing. Some people compared his picture to Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies. Some laughed at the thought his belt may have been bought in Primark. It got worse. “I hope you don’t wake up tomorrow” said some. Others openly wished that he would be burned alive. I’m not saying that James didn’t deserve a kicking, but as the mob mentality grew, things definitely got ugly.

Before long, Sky News caught wind of the story. “What the hell i’m on sky news” tweeted an increasingly desperate James. But as the attacks on him showed no sign of abating (and his followers swelled to over 40,000 – by way of contrast, I have around 70) the meaner personality became dominant again and apologies turned into threats.

“@SkyNews you fucking report me on the news again i’ll have you done for harassment and a law suit you get me final chance you cunts”

“@_OllyRiley shut your dirty little mouth you cunt i’m going to kill you when your back trust me”

“@_OllyRiley i don’t give a shit bruv i’m gonna drown him and i’m gonna shoot you he failed why you supporting him you cunt”

This type of threat is laughable, of course. I mean, would *you* be scared of a 17 year old who looks more like 13, has no idea who you are or where you live and clearly doesn’t have the brainpower to work it out? He strikes me as the kind of idiot who would act the hard man until you effortlessly gave him a proper and well deserved pasting.

Nevertheless, these days, when a man can end up in court for joking on Twitter about blowing up an airport, the Police take this stuff more seriously than you or I probably do.

When I did a bit of digging this morning, it turns out that James has quite a colourful internet footprint (unlike myself, whose most shameful piece of internet history is some dreadfully written Jem and The Holograms fan fiction) and YouTube is littered with his unintelligible gangster style ramblings. In particular, his ongoing cyber war with an equally stupid rival:


There’s quite a bit of this kind of stuff on YouTube so it would seem – you know, twelve year olds filming videos of themselves, goading their arch enemies and hilariously promising to slaughter one another’s entire family – which suggests to me that Britain’s youth have been watching one too many episodes of EastEnders. And indeed, you might be right for thinking that Reece Sonny James deserves everything that’s now coming to him, but I wonder *why* such things are happening in the first place and what can be done about it.

I’ll leave the final word to someone called Dreadnaught, who left this comment on another blog recently and I thought I would repeat here. I think it summarises everything quite perfectly, no?

“Would this tit-head have had the balls to say what he said to Daley's face - I think not. Would said tit-head attempt to show Daley how it should be done - I think not.

The internet has spawned legions of castrated keyboard warriors who dish out abuse anonymously under the illusion that they are exercising their right to freedom of speech. Anonymity has empowered gutless sneaks and trolls to delude themselves that they are safe within their own delusions and multiple personas to act with impunity.

Daley was right to report this abusive cretin.

With any rights there comes responsibilities - some people, however, insist on learning this lesson the hard way.”