UKC

This caught my eye:

"But the story of the triumph of the human will to survive in the face of almost overwhelming adversity was lost on the teenagers.
They dubbed him a “crevasse w------”, condemned his work as “boring” and even claimed he would lead them to fail their exams.

Mr Simpson summed up the abuse in a tweet which read: "A lovely day of children writhing in their hellish hormonal middens...good night vile innocents may you all seethe in bilious acid pus.”
He told one student “adios stupido” and called the remainder “illiterate saddos”."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/9289401/Touching-th...

I remember reading it when I was at school but I couldn't imagine it being part of the syllabus. It's a fantastic read but I thought you had to study, you know, like novels in English. Plus I think non-climbers might struggle with the detail.

In reply to Morgan Woods:

It's a pretty dull book, very far from JS's best, so much so that one was half-rooting for the inevitable happy ending not to occur. And you'd think Joe would have more sense than to make a fool of himself on Twitter.

Of course nasty children on the internet are, well, nasty, but nothing new.

jcm

In reply to Morgan Woods: Couple of threads about this last week

In reply to toad: was in the Guardian last week

In reply to toad: gotcha...i'll keep up in future :p

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I'd say it's his best book. subsequent ones may have been more considered but not half as good a story.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously: Dull??? It's a real cliff hanger.

In reply to Morgan Woods:
But I think its a TOTAL non-story. A few GSCE students suggesting to each other that the book they were being asked to study was a bag of toss in tweets to each other find that the author himself is on a rampage.

They didn't 'attack' Mr Simpson, as I understand it, they just said, to each other - 'I don't like this....'

In reply to althesin:

Only till the knife comes out.......

In reply to Morgan Woods: The Docu-film was better than the book IMO

In reply to andyathome:

lol

In reply to The Lemming:
Thank you....I was quite pleased myself.

In reply to Morgan Woods:


lots of lol here, that's very funny and only kids would come up with it - pure in-betweeners. in one two-word phrase it says plenty about kids, the book and the media, in their presentation of the story.

I bet the exam board wish they'd stuck with jane eyre - they would talk about charlotte bronte like that.

In reply to Morgan Woods:

I always got the impression Simpson takes himself pretty seriously, everyone needs taking down a peg every once in a while!

In reply to Removed User: And you got that impression from knowing him personally did you?

If you did, you'd know he is exactly the opposite - there's a big difference between being occasionally introspective, and taking your self too seriously.

In reply to andyathome:

Actually it was a bit more aggro than that. They were being fairly rude about the book and Joe as an author (in typical teenager fasion) which lead to the banter that the papers picked up on. Joe wasn't making a fuss though, he was just responding in kind.

Then a couple of them started trying to get #PervySimpson trending in a campaign to smear him as a paedophile and he understandably lost patience with it. Other people on twitter did some digging and reported the kids to their headmaster and it all went very quiet very quickly, with some of the kids accounts being deleted.

I follow Joe on Twitter and saw it all happen 'live'.. it's weird to be watching the teacup before the storm arrives for once!

It was massively overblown, but to be fair to Joe and corect the impression from andyathome's post, he was not overreacting at any point.

In reply to mullermn:
I accede to you. I have not followed the abuse in detail.

In reply to Morgan Woods: He should set "Slasher" Yates on them.