British synchronized diver Tom Daley thanked his fans for their support on Twitter after he and teammate Pete Waterfield fell short of winning a medal in Men’s Synchronized 10m Platform Diving. But not everyone had messages of encouragement to send back.
Twitter user @Rileyy_69 had a few choice words to say to the diver.
“you should be ashamed of yourself you let out country down just fuck off,” Riley wrote.
What Riley probably didn’t expect was for Daley to retweet one of the messages to his more than 621,000 fans.
“After giving it my all….you get idiot’s sending me this…RT @Rileyy_69: @TomDaley1994 you let your dad down i hope you know that,” Daley tweeted.
Daley’s father died in May 2011 of a brain tumor.
The message has been retweeted 22,763 times as fans united with Daley. They have attacked @Riley_69 on Twitter since Daley first sent out the tweet and even started a petition to get the user booted off Twitter. Over 7,000 people have signed the petition. Fans have also used the #GetRileyy_69Banned hashtag to talk about Riley, which Daley encouraged with retweets. One user even had his account suspended for allegedly posting Riley’s phone number to Twitter.
“Thank you everyone for all your support before, during and after the synchro, the atmosphere was incredible!” Daley wrote.
At first Riley, for his part, seemed to be remorseful when he apologized to Daley. After the story spread and he found out that he was featured on Sky News, however, he lashed out again at Daley when he didn’t answer Riley’s apology. Daley also threatened people who mentioned him and threatened to sue SkyNews.
Riley seems to have lost his enthusiasm for the Olympics and is still taunting his “haters” with tweets that say that he’ll “leave for good” if he gets enough retweets. Some users are starting to call him out for trying to get more followers.
“[H]ow about you just do us a favour & just fuck off,” Amy Kirkpatrick wrote. “You’re just looking for attention.”
Photo via Twitter