Floppy the Monster and Genuine Evil

Gaining Twitter followers is an odd process. Some are friends, others colleagues, people in the same field, and others are simply folk who've enjoyed my endless stream of outraged sarcasm.

But there's a further category of followers - those who completely baffle me. Today I've picked up Floppy the Monster, which appears not to be a Viagra-selling spam machine, but some kind of educational resource:

Education Resources for 4-6 year olds. Floppy the Monster belongs to Emily. They do everything together. After all monsters and young children can be friends. 

Which does sound - hopefully unintentionally - like a grooming exercise. But if it's legitimate, I do wonder what attracted them to my feed. I usually tweet politics, teaching, literary theory and sarcasm. Admittedly I have a childish sense of humour, but that's about it.

It's even more baffling when I look at another recent follower, Giovanni di Stefano. Once John di Stefano, he claims to be an international lawyer, though the Irish courts declined to recognise him. He was personal friends with Slobodan Milosevic and Arkan, the genocidal murderer who made di Stefano an honorary general in his murderous Tigers, and claimed to defend Saddam Hussein, Nicholas van Hoogstraten and an assortment of the most disgusting, often evil men on the planet. What does di Stefano get from following me?

What have we learned from this? That Plashing Vole is a broad church. That - through me - 'monsters and young children can be friends'. Giovanni: meet Emily. Play nicely.