London, Nov. 2: In the realm of Twitter insults, it was at the far end of mild.

“Much as I admire and adore the chap, they are a bit ... boring,” a Twitter user called brumplum wrote on Saturday, speaking of the tweets of Stephen Fry, the British writer, actor and television personality.

But that little tweet set off a frenzy of vitriolic attacks and counterattacks on Twitter, drawing an untold number of people into an increasingly charged debate and thrusting brumplum — in reality a man from Birmingham, England, named Richard — unhappily into the public’s angry glare. It was an example once again of the extraordinary power of Twitter to distribute information and to sway the opinions of vast groups of people in tiny amounts of time.

It was also an example of how Twitter reinforces the tendency of adults to behave like high school students, passing rude notes, spreading exaggerated rumours and obsessing endlessly — and pointlessly — about who said what mean thing about whom.

In any case, after brumplum sent his mildly critical tweet, Fry somehow found out about it, and it made him feel so terriblethat he was considering quitting Twitter altogether on account of all the “aggression and unkindness around”.

And the matter would have rested there, probably, if not for the fact that Fry, a much-loved figure who has spoken openly about his crippling depression and about being bipolar, has more than 934,000 followers and is one of the most widely read Twitter users in Britain.

When Fry’s followers heard of his distress, they tended to do two things: offer their support and criticise his perceived antagonist.

Suddenly, Richard from Birmingham, who says on his Twitter profile that he writes “one-line movie reviews, and more,” found himself the target of a stream of unpleasant tweets. Among the most upsetting, to him at least, were those from the well-known British actor Alan Davies, who is a friend of Fry’s, called Richard a “moron,” and worse.