Queen Elizabeth Cyber-Bullied On Twitter After Historic First Royal Tweet, Palace Shrugs Off Trolls
England’s Queen Elizabeth II made royal history Saturday, sending the first Twitter message ever posted, personally, by a British monarch — and almost as soon as she posted the message, the 88-year-old ceremonial ruler of the 16-nation Commonwealth of Nations was slammed by cyber-bullies.
Many other messages in response to the Queen’s first tweet were supportive, however, welcoming Queen Elizabeth to world of internet social media.
As reported earlier by The Inquisitr, Queen Elizabeth posted her tweet from an iPad at a new exhibit presented by London’s Science Museum. The Queen was on hand to preside over the opening of the new exhibit, dedicated to the new technology of the Information Age.
Her Twitter message was simple one.
It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R.
— BritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) October 24, 2014
The “R” in her signature after “Elizabeth” stands for “Regina,” which is Latin for “Queen.”
Queen Elizabeth does not have her own personal Twitter account, and it’s difficult to imagine that she would make much use of it if she did. Her tweet was posted to the official Twitter feed of the British Monarchy.
Shortly after the tweet went live on the British Monarchy account, the cyber-bullies came out in force, directing a variety of hostile messages at Elizabeth, the second-longest reigning monarch in Britain’s history.
“One Twitter troll even told the Queen to ‘f*** off and die.'”
But even with the angry and abusive messages, the Queen Elizabeth tweet received more than 20,000 retweets before Saturday was through. The British Monarchy Twitter feed, which already had 722,000 followers before the historic royal tweet, picked up more than 100,000 new followers just as a result of the single tweet from the Queen.
While the Queen herself has not made another tweet, and has neither replied nor commented publicly on the cyber-bullies who targeted her, an official spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said that the royals simply shrugged off the negative responses as something that comes with the territory of participating in online social media.
“We saw some tweets with profanity but that is just the nature of the format,” said the Palace PR person. “We were fully cognizant of the nature of Twitter, where anyone anywhere can express their opinion, but we were delighted that so many people — in the tens of thousands — responded positively. We also received tens of thousands of new followers as a result of the tweet.”
The British Monarchy Twitter feed has been active since 2009, but has never received a personal contribution from Her Majesty herself until Saturday. Queen Elizabeth also has an official Facebook page, and that too has frequently been targeted by cyber-bullies.
