Professor Green is the poor man's Ricky Gervais

There's an instructive blog by ahwellnevermind on what happens when you poke a bit of gentle fun at Professor Green.

Spoilers: he has a very thin skin.

Green had posted a self-satisfied little tweet the other day about how he can make people feel better about their "shit" lives. ahwellnevermind tweeted back "says the poor man's Eminem."

Professor Green read the tweet, smiled slightly to himself, and went about his life.

Except he didn't:

He retweeted immediately quoting it with "But I'm not poor?"

For someone who makes their living using words, the inability to understand the idiom "the poor man's X" is a little surprising; the setting of his twitter acolytes on someone for a bit of gentle ribbing is incredibly disappointing.

Because, naturally, his followers piled in:

From that second on my @ mentions were full. Pages & pages of abuse. [...]
Then I saw one that said go kill yourself. Then one said I will hunt you down & kill you. After that I stopped reading them.

At which point, Professor Green saw what was happening and reacted with horror and little shame, begging his fans to behave with a little more restraint.

Except, of course, he didn't. He enjoyed what was happening, posting gurgling delight:

You don't get in a boxing ring expecting not to get punched.

[...]
Also if you choose to share an opinion without being asked for one you should be as willing to accept a response.

There's a couple of things here - first, isn't Twitter a forum for posting opinions without being asked?

And, secondly, even if your vanity is paper-thin that the merest hint that you're not all that upsets you so, is getting a million strangers to post death-threats a proportionate response?

We can usefully compare what happened the time Green made some oh-so-hilarious joke about bulimia on Twitter. Here was Green, sharing an unasked-for opinion, and drawing a slapdown. Did he shrug and say "well, I ought to be willing to accept a response"?

Did he buggery:

I'm over they heads like a bulimic on a sea-saw,' he tweeted, before adding: 'Queue all the people who start telling me how insensitive I am and how bulimia jokes aren't funny yadda yadda yadda.'

Nope. Apparently reacting to Green's opinions is bad. Perhaps you can only really say what you think if you have hundreds of thousands of proxies to do your work for you.