Keller @ Large: Twitter Doesn't Care About Garbage Behavior

BOSTON (CBS) - According to her mother, Gabby Douglas, the 20-year-old US Olympic gymnast, is "devastated" by Twitter bullying that has oozed out of the online sewer for the second straight games.

If it isn't vicious comments about her hair, which looks just fine to me and, I suspect, any other decent human being, it's vile insults about how she didn't have her hand over her heart when the anthem was playing. (Never mind that both her parents are military veterans.)

So why is this adorable young lady letting the anonymous venom of low-grade fools bother her so much?

Hey, she's only a kid. But that isn't even the relevant question.

The questions are, why do people engage in this garbage behavior, and why doesn't Twitter do something about it?

The second one is easy: Twitter doesn't care.

They say they do, and they could do much more about it than they do, but that would cost money, and they need all the vulgar trolls around to pad their statistics.

It's harder to figure out why someone would so gratuitously attack someone else for such idiotic reasons.

My best guess is that it is the desperate cry for validation of sad, lonely little people with nothing else to live for but the cheap thrill of kicking a complete stranger.

If they had a pet, they'd kick that.

But there are ways to stem the tide of Twitter sewage. You can block it or, even better, mute the trolls when you attract them, so you never see their bile again and they don't even know it.

I have a few hundred of them on block.

Or, Gabby, you could delete your mentions altogether. Anyone you really care about will find another way to reach you.

And your hair will thank you for washing the rest of them out of it.

Listen to Jon's commentary: