If Richard Armitage deletes a tweet, that’s Richard Armitage’s problem

It’s become a sort of recurring exercise — @RCArmitage tweets mostly business related things. And then radio silence breaks and something that looks like a human tweet bursts through. That’s what happened today — two funny tweets about things Armitage said he was seeing on German TV while running on a treadmill. Lots of responses and funny jokes in the #richardarmitage tag on Twitter and then — poof! — a few hours later, they are gone. Totally predictable. And totally predictable the responses — fans are not respectful, fans crossed the line. When Richard Armitage deletes a tweet, it’s because fans have caused a problem.

Those fans would prefer, it seems, for the rest of us simply to ignore it when Armitage tweets something funny. Don’t risk making a joke back, or reacting to the joke in any way, positive or negative, because the human who made the joke will go back into hiding. Don’t cross a line!

In response to this mood, let me suggest the following: if Richard Armitage is deleting a tweet, it’s Richard Armitage’s problem. Not mine, not yours.

If the initial joke sets the parameters for the responses, then these jokes set those parameters quite broadly. It’s hard for me to see what exactly is “respectful” in the first place about a nun joke and a wank joke or why fans would be obliged to respond “respectfully” to them (or even what the respectful response to a wank joke is in the first place).

But we didn’t force him to make the jokes, and he made the decision to delete the tweets all by himself.

As adults, we are responsible for our reactions to certain things. If I feel bad, that’s on me. I’ve had a ridiculously aggravating day, and these tweets were one of two light spots. I’m going to preserve the idea that Richard Armitage possibly still has a mildly naughty, slightly juvenile sense of humor, and that he thought those tweets were funny, and that we laughed with him for several hours. Because, you know: German TV is a little weird. (Germans will be the first to tell you this.) The German language does throw up inadvertent jokes (Germans will be the first to tell you this, too.) There’s something slightly incongruous about those habits (nuns will be the first to admit this as well).

Don’t let’s let ourselves be guilted about Armitage’s deleted tweets — either by other fans, or by ourselves. We can wait till Armitage gives an explanation (unlikely to happen) to attribute some blame. Or we can decide that he is an adult, too, knew what he was doing when he made the jokes, and can take all the necessary responsibility for that himself.

~ by Servetus on February 23, 2016.