When Did Twitter Become a Direct Link to 911?

On Sunday, June 21, 2009, celebrity blogger, Perez Hilton claims he was assaulted by wil.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. The attack happened outside a club in Toronto. Perez and The Peas were both in Toronto for the Much Music Video Awards. At the awards Fergie of The Peas approached Perez to ask him about some not so nice comments he had made about her and the Black Eyed Peas. According to a statement Perez posted on his blog, he told her things were fine between them. However, according to a statement issued by wil.i.am on his blog, Perez was loud, rude, and disrespectful to Fergie which upset the singer very much.

Both Perez and wil.i.am ended up at the same club after the awards were over. Perez says wil.i.am approached him, asking him to not mention The Black Eyed Peas on his blog again, and tried to intimidate him. At this point Perez says he decided to not let “this thug” as he called wil.i.am intimidate him and decided to speak his mind, which included calling wil.i.am a “fag”. Wil.i.am admits to approaching Perez, but says he simply asked him to not write disrespectful things about his band at which point Perez once again became loud and rude. Without a doubt, some words were exchanged, and it escalated into someone punching Perez. The question is, who?

TMZ managed to get some footage of the attack, but it was a bit difficult to see exactly who it was. That partially seemed to be in part to someone telling the TMZ cameraman to “get back”. Wil.i.am says a fan punched Perez. As for Perez, his own statements seem to be a bit conflicting. After being punched, Perez headed back to his hotel, the Soho Metropolitan Hotel, which was also the same hotel the Black Eyed Peas were staying at. Perez claims that wil.i.am and members of his entourage follwed him back to the hotel. Perez claims he was afraid, worrying one of them might have a gun and called the police. This is where Twitter and conflicting statements by Perez come in.

Perez, a member of Twitter, began tweeting! He tweeted he was in shock and needed the police, adding,”Please come to the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel now. Please.”. He then went on to say he was assaulted by wil.i.am and his security guards. Perez kept on tweeting, at one point saying he was bleeding and needed to file a report, at another saying he was still waiting for the police adding, “Please, can the police come to the SoHo Met Hotel.”. Naturally, this send a wave through Perez fans who began to bombard the police with calls. Once the police arrived, Perez tweeted again to let his followers know they were there and to stop calling. To many it seemed strange that Perez would tweet instead of calling the police himself if he were seriously injured or afraid. Evidently someone on Twitter asked him about this because he posted that he had called the police before he tweeted but they weren’t showing up and he felt helpless. Despite that post, many think it was ridiculous for Perez to use Twitter in that way. When asked what they thought of it, one person responded, “What, does he think Twitter is a direct line to 911?”. Another said, “I hope the Toronto police aren’t sitting around on their Blackberries waiting for a tweet about an emergency.”. Perhaps one person who was asked may have hit the nail on the head. His response was, “Sounds like a man who likes to say nasty things about people finally got what he deserves and wanted some publicity out of it.”. That seems to be the opinion of many people.

The story doesn’t end there though. In his statement on his blog, Perez now says that it was the Peas’ manager, Polo, who hit him. So who was it? Wil.i.am? A security guard? Or Polo? Perez can’t seem to narrow it down or stop spewing obscenities about The Peas on his blog, actually ending his rant by calling Fergie a “fugly bitch”. He is also still tweeting about it, even sending a message to wil.i.am saying there were multiple witnesses. At one point Perez posted that he would not talk about it any further, but several hours later was tweeting about it.

In contradiction to Perez’s rantings and name calling, wil.i.am appears to have remained pretty calm. He did open a Twitter account to post his side of the story by providing a link to Dipdive where he issued a statement to Perez saying he never hit him, and “Shame on you, shame on your behavior.”. If one were to judge the truth simply by the two behaviors one might assume Perez really was just seeking publicity, but the truth is for the Toronto police to sort out.

After asking many people their thoughts on the situation, it seems the truth isn’t really what the public is wondering about. Most wonder why he turned to Twitter and what Twitter thinks of the drama that unfolded on their site. Some were appalled by Perez’s use of the terms “fag” and “faggot”, which seemed strange being used so hatefully by a proud gay man. Still others don’t care who hit him, as long as he was hit. Many believe he deserved it after all the venom he has spewed about so many. So will Twitter be the newest version of 911? Or has the queen of mean learned a lesson from this? Probably not on both accounts, but only time will tell.