Queen Elizabeth II Sends First Tweet, Gets Trolled 4 Minutes After First Post
On Oct. 24, Queen Elizabeth II sent her first tweet to mark the opening of a new exhibition at London's Science Museum.
"It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @sciencemuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R," the Queen wrote. The R reportedly stands for "Regina," which is the Latin word for queen.
The post was immediately followed by another message, which said, "The last tweet was sent personally by The Queen from her official Twitter account @BritishMonarchy #TheQueenTweets." This was followed by another post which showed a photo of the Queen, dressed in a blue coat and hat and standing behind a podium while she tapped on the screen of an iPad.
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The @BritishMonarchy account has been on Twitter since April 2009, but this is the first time that the Queen has personally posted a tweet on the social media site. According to The Daily Mail, immediately after sending the tweet, the account was bombarded with messages to the Queen.
Some have been very irreverent and asked to "tweet us a selfie babe." Four minutes after the Queen's tweet, the post had its first troll who wrote, "Welcome to twitter! Abdicate." Twitter user @sayhellodavid cheekily asked the monarch, "hey Liz, who are you loving on X Factor?"
Others simply expressed their happiness at the Queen's tweet. Twitter user Dave Evans Voiceover wrote, "Welcome to Twitter Your Majesty. It's an honour to be one of the very first to tweet to the Queen herself!" while another user wrote, "Welcome to Twitter ma'am."
Of the "abdicate" post, chairman of the British Monarchist Society, Thomas Mace Archer-Mills said, "It's incredibly disrespectful. She is showing she is keeping up to date and embracing technology and change."
The Queen is not the first royal to use Twitter as her son, the Duke of York, is reported to be the most prolific tweeter in the royal family and has an account under his own name. The site has also been used by Prince Harry who signed up in May, but he recently admitted that he no longer has a personal account.
