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1, 2, 3, 4, Chipper Declares A Twitter War

Chipper Jones is accused of cyber-bullying.

By gondeee
USA TODAY Sports

I really wasn't going to write about this, but then I came up with that headline and I thought that encapsulated the adolescence of the whole thing quite well, so I thought why not. Besides, this will probably become a "story" somewhere out there because of the charge of cyber-bullying and how sensitive everyone seems to be to that.

So it all started last week while a couple of Tweeps were watching a basketball game. Chipper Jones was watching, and tweeted this:

Pretty benign, right? Well then someone named Pete Gaines tweeted this at Chipper:

I know, right! Just some silly troll, trolling. But that got retweeted eight times and favorited eight times, so it made the rounds. That prompted a bunch of Chipper Jones supporters (or partisans if this were a conflict) to unleash a nasty flurry of tweets on Mr. Gaines. Then a while later Chipper tweeted this:

Which was retweeted and favorited each over a hundred times. That apparently unleashed more cyber-bullying, apparently egged on by Chipper. Jones also tweeted this about Mr. Gaines:

And this...

That tweet was retweeted and favorited over 1400 times. So yeah, it got infantile pretty fast. Ah the technological marvel of Twitter. Citizens of some countries use it to launch revolutions and overthrow dictators, but apparently it can also be used for playground-style shouting matches.

Then Chipper started back in on Deadspin today for some reason, going off on them. I won't repost those, but that was apparently brought on by an article that Mr. Gaines wrote calling what Chipper did... wait for it... cyber-bullying. That article amounted to this explanation slash worsening of the situation:

So maybe it wasn't particularly nice of me to say Friday night on Twitter that Chipper Jones, who has never tested positive for steroids and who has cheated on his wife with a Hooters waitress, should "go do some adultery and steroids" in response to Jones' relatively innocuous suggestion on Twitter that Kansas guard Elijah Johnson ought not have punched Michigan center Mitch McGary in the testicles, as Johnson most certainly did in the opening minutes of the Kansas-Michigan game.

Perhaps I was miffed that Jones' mere presence happened across my Twitter timeline. I've heard stories over the years of Jones' hypocrisy-that he put on a convincing aw-shucks good-ol'-Christian-boy act for the media and (some) fans, but was what students of the type call a "raging douchebag" the rest of the time. I've heard stories of bullying, hypocrisy and all the other things that might be expected of a grown-ass multimillionaire man-child who calls himself "Chipper." Anyway, I was a dick to Chipper Jones on Twitter. That was uncool of me.

Anyway, it goes on from there to accuse Chipper of other things like being disingenuous to the idea that Mr. Gaines has of what Chipper should be... or something silly like that.

Is this cyber-bullying? And which one of the two people involved are guilty of it? Are both? And don't get me wrong, I'm not insensitive about bullying, I just don't think this is it. This is more or less cyber-douchebaggery piled upon more cyber-douchebaggery.

We'll see if this becomes a bigger story. I imagine that some anti-bullying crusade might pick it up and go after the Old Battle Axe. Of course, the Axe needs to realize that he shouldn't dignify silly little comments like this in the way that he did.

It's probably too much to ask that nothing more come of this, right?

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