Philip Bloom

Dear Mr. Baker,

I have woken up to be informed of a hate filled tirade against me by you on twitter. I am not in the slightest bit surprised as you have done this on numerous occasions.

Twitter is a place to voice your opinions and if this is your voice then so be it, as rude, obnoxious and mis-informed it is. If it crossed into libel which it is very close to being we are talking a whole different game here though. 

I spend a lot of time answering questions and helping people out on twitter, some of whom I follow. I block certain people like yourself due to their tendency to go off on hate fuelled rants which is a shame as you often offer up valuable information between the bile. 

You are not alone, there are are a number of people like yourself I also would rather avoid. My life is rather stressful and I have taken many positive steps in my life to not let people like yourself wind me up and upset me. Nobody wants to read hate like this, it is incredibly upsetting, whether directed at oneself or anyone else. There is no need for it but I know there is nothing I can do to stop it. 

One thing I can do is not read it. That is why I block you. Unfortunately certain people I like, admire and follow re-tweet things from individuals whose name I would rather not see in my timeline. This is a problem with twitter. You can block people but those people can still show up in your timeline if what they say gets re-tweeted.

I wrote a very polite, friendly DM to someone I admire enormously explaining I had to unfollow them for that reason. I was not blocking them as I still want to hear from them but I would rather not see those names in my timeline for my own sanity. 

It seems that you take issue with that. That is fine Mr. Baker, silly but fine. Most of us live in a free society. As mentioned previously it is a shame as both you and the others offer up useful information which helps others. It is just when you go on hate fuelled tirades then your true colours are shown and they are rather ugly and I want nothing to do with them.

I wish you the best and I truly hope, probably futilely, that you can keep the great stuff and lose the hate. The community would benefit from this. I know “haters are gonna hate” and there is nothing I can do about that. It doesn’t stop me from being sad about it though.

The twitter filmmaking community is a great thing and the rather infantile bashing that goes on should have been left in the playground where it belongs. 

Kind regards,

Philip Bloom