Paris attacks: Twitter's not a place to make bad news better

Everyone had changed their profile to 'Je Suis Charlie' but were more interested in Ched Evans

Following the appalling events in Paris last week, going on Twitter was quite depressing. As an ex-Goth however, I've always been a sucker for the dark side.

Donald Trump, as always, was quick to give his views. He felt that had the cartoonists been armed they would have been able to fight the terrorists off. This is one of Trump's principal world views – if everybody was armed there would be no gun violence. He also thinks he's going to be the next US president so … we should all be safe from 2016.

I tweeted that the real tragedy of the day was that real people were being killed in the name of imaginary people. This produced an onslaught from both sides. Muslims attacked me for claiming Mohamed was imaginary. I tried to explain that I was referring to the general concept of God/Allah/Yahweh but they were having none of it.

Their main refrain seemed to be "why does this magazine insult our Prophet?" I replied that the magazine was an equal opportunity insulter and attacked everyone in a rather glorious manner. The Muslim tweeters were having none of it – the worst of them insisting the cartoonists had deserved their fate for this insult to Islam.

Then the Ukipers arrived. Muslims were "medieval" and "barbaric" and if they didn't like it over here then they should bugger off back home … wherever that was ….

By now, it was just an online barroom brawl so I turned to Katie Hopkins for a balanced and rational view. To my delight I found out that she had finally been locked up. Sadly, it was only in the Big Brother house. I urge everyone to vote to keep her in there for as long as possible – now is not the time for her to be on Twitter.

Back to my page, and although everyone had changed their profile pics to Je Suis Charlie, they seemed more interested in discussing Ched Evans. An extraordinary number of tweeters were claiming he was innocent and should be allowed to play professional football. The fact that he had been found guilty in a court of law was apparently irrelevant. Several examples of courts being wrong were produced – as though this meant that all legal verdicts were now defunct.

Trump piped up that it was a bit chilly in New York and that he longed for some "global warming". Piers Morgan showed us photos of his snow-covered Manhattan terrace and bemoaned in another humblebrag that he couldn't have breakfast outside.

Back in Paris people were retweeting the clip of the poor Muslim policeman being shot in the head by the terrorists. Mainstream media were taking the same clip and editing as close as they could without showing the shot itself. To watch this you had to sit through a 30-second advert for a supermarket. It was all getting very peculiar. I turned to Trump again – he was in the middle of a discussion over whether Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese should film his life story ….