Many people who were dumbfounded by the poor quality of his writing are being lumped into the category of people with a chip on their should about class, simply because they ripped the piss over his “skinny jeans” comment.

Sure some of it was over the top but…. this is absolutely nothing new. It’s simply a new format.

Lastly, Conor as a blog journalist yourself I’m surprised you’ve blamed the viral nature of the commenting on some kind of pre-planned attack on the Guardian. Surely this “viral” phenomenon was nothing more than old fashioned word-of-mouth. Check out how many people on the page cite their source as “the office”.

The kid was getting grief for nothing more than the chipped egos of the Guardian readership. Elitist bunch of saddos aren’t they? The incident said more about the Guardian and those that swarm around their online presence than the youngfella.

On the one level, we have have seen the usual tirade from “professional” journalists accusing bloggers of being amateurs. The blogosphere responds in kind by arguing that their kind of news-gathering is somehow more authentic, and more at the pulse of things. It’s no wonder then that Max and his kind provoke fury in both camps.

Lastly, if a national publication is going to endorse the ethos that “comment is free”, is it not therefore hypocritical to write-off an almost unanimous hostile response as “cyber-bullying” simply because the response was negative? The so-called presumption that the responses were indicitive of “class hatred” are way off the mark: the ground-swell is a a reaction to nepotism, cronyism, and the fourth estate’s ongoing obsession with the loathsome phenomena that is “lifestyle journalism”. Which is particularly odious from a paper which many would have once considered as left of centre.

Secondly, the so-called “vicious” response is the same thing that professional journalists, who open up their copy to comments, get everyday when they publish shoddy, inaccurate or poorly-researched stories. Why should this kid be offered any other treatment?

The Internet has spawned this kind of “interactive” story-telling, and if editors don’t like it, they simply don’t have to open up their stories for comment. Where did the trend to discuss so-called “bullying” come from? From the blogs of course.

As I said, journalists, writers, artists, musicians, actors - anyone in the public eye - have been getting it in the neck for years. If some jumped-up kid wants to write about being a jumped-up kid and a national newspaper ridiculously endorses it, he should expect everything he gets. Sh*t happens.

I also couldn’t help thinking that Max is only 19 years old, leave him alone. If only people could get that animated and passionate about other things, things that actually matter.