It wasn’t that long ago where the only way you could hurl insults at artists was at their performances or the off chance that you actually ran into them.
But in this day-and-age, social media trolls have 24-hour access to celebrities and a virtual soap box to spew their opinion.
Niall Horan has heard enough of it. It’s not clear what he read that triggered his Twitter storm, but in a series of posts he sounded off.
Writing in one tweet: "I see a lot of abuse aimed at artists online. Why can’t everyone just concentrate on the artists they like and if you don’t have anything nice to say about artists you may not like, well just keep your mouth shut."
Following that with a tweet that said: "I’m not talking about any artist in particular. I’m talking about the culture on here of just abusing people because you can. It’s not like you would walk down the street screaming out loud about the people you dislike a small bit."
"Never affected me. I'm too private, I don’t read things online, I don’t really know what people are talking about online but every now and then I’ll look and I see people just saying awful things, especially to the female artists," he continued.
Adding: "These girls work so hard on their craft and lyrics, dance routines, screen content, marketing etc.... and then they just get ridiculed by trolls online."
Niall’s hit single ’Nice to Meet Ya" is out now.
Photo: Getty Images