Browser extensions reminds you not to be a jerk on Twitter

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

The developer of a new browser extension wants to remind you that being a jerk on social media could come back to haunt you in the real world – a lesson that some people had to learn the hard way after messing with the daughter of former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling

For those unfamiliar with the story, Schilling recently sent out a Tweet congratulating his daughter Gabby for being accepted to Salve Regina University, where she would be play softball. His tweet was met with a series of crude, vulgar and offensive messages–Schilling decided he would do something about it.

Don’t be a troll

As the Huffington Post reported on Thursday, the ex-Major League Baseball star wrote a lengthy blog post regarding the incident, in which he revealed the identities of those behind the Twitter attacks. As a result, some of them lost their jobs and Schilling is also considering pursuing legal action against the online trolls.

“I knew every name and school, sport and position, of every one of them in less than an hour. The ones that didn’t play sports were just as easy to locate,” Schilling wrote.

“What these kids are failing to realize, what this generation fails to realize is this; Everything they’ve just said and done? That is out there now, forever. It can, and in some cases will, follow them for the rest of their lives,” the former MLB All-Star and World Series MVP added.

Keep those comments to yourself

Which brings us back to the browser extension—an attempt to digitize common sense, so you don’t have to have any.

According to Gizmodo, the extension is known as TweetFired and it is available on Google Chrome. It has one simple function – it changes the “What’s happening?” text that normally appears in Twitter’s input box to “Remember: you are always one tweet away from being fired.”

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TweetFired’s “one simple function is to bestow you with the most important advice the internet can offer: Never, ever tweet,” the website said (only half-joking, one can only assume), adding that even though “some hide it well,” deep down there are a lot of “blithering, attention-starved idiots” that use social media and could use the advice – lest they mess with the wrong athlete.

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