As a hideously middle-class Guardian reader, there's a very real chance you've experienced the disappointment of "charity gifting'. The horrible moment when you tear open a birthday present from a "friend" only to discover that, in lieu of an actual gift – a decent bottle of wine, a hot air balloon ride, a nice cat – they've decided to FedEx a goat to an African village "in your name". It's perverse, really. Your friend spends the same amount of money they would have spent buying something for you, but instead it's them who gets to enjoy the feeling of warmth, while you're left to wallow in a cocktail of disappointment and guilt. Could there be a more selfish approach to charity?

Well, yes, actually, there could – and I'm proud to say I came up with it. It's called UncharityGifts.com and it's the perfect way to get revenge on your smug friend, while restoring the karmic balance in your friendship. For just £20, we'll send a poacher to an African village to steal a cow in your friend's name! Or, if you're feeling generous, for just £50 we'll pay local workers to fill in a much-needed well with concrete or raze an entire school to the ground. Of course, as with normal charity gifts, you'll receive no actual proof that we've done any of the above, rather than, say, pocketing the money to cover admin costs, but who cares? The important thing is that your friend will receive a handsome certificate of authenticity to make them think long and hard about what they've done.

Remember: if you steal a man's fish, you'll make him hungry for a day, but steal his nets and you'll keep him hungry for a lifetime.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Paul, that's the most hideous thing I've ever heard. The people who buy these charity gifts have nothing but honourable intentions. Only a truly sick mind would assign selfish motives to such an obviously generous and charitable act." And you're probably justified in your thinking. Furthermore, I imagine you're disgusted that I would use an attack on charity as a theme for a column. And, once again, justification would be your wingman. You might even go so far as to describe me as the most pathetic, snivelling excuse for a hack that has put finger to keyboard this week.

But that, dear reader, is where you'd be wrong. Because that title has been taken – fair and square – by Andrew Orlowski from geek news site, the Register. More on him in a moment. But first, some background.

On Thursday of last week a slightly amazing thing happened. So amazing, that you've probably already read about it in one of the (literally) hundreds of news outlets that covered the event. In almost 200 cities across the globe, from London to Lagos, tens of thousands of people came together for a global party called Twestival. The ridiculous name comes from the fact that the entire event was organised using Twitter while the ridiculous attendance numbers stem from the whole shindig being held to raise money for Charity: water, an organisation that aims to bring clean water to some of the world's poorest people. The global task of collecting all of the pledged money is only just beginning, but already the total raised is well into six figures, every penny of which will go to building wells in Uganda, Ethiopia and India.

By any metric you choose to use, the event was a gigantic success. On top of raising a shitload of cash, Twestival brought together strangers from across the world and raised a huge amount of awareness of an inspiring charity. My mind may be capable of coming up with the concept of uncharity gifts but even I, in my darkest moments, couldn't think of a single negative thing to say about Twestival. But then again, why would I want to? I'd have to be mental.

Which brings me back to Andrew Orlowski.

Orlowski, in the highly likely event that you haven't heard of him, is what I would call a professional troll. A "journalist" whose oeuvre is to spout views so calculatingly dumb – global warming? scientific evidence, schmientific evidence – and to rely on wordplay so pathetic – Wikipedia users? "wiki fiddlers" more like! – that the editors of the Register regularly disable comments on his diatribes, lest a child accidentally crawl across a keyboard and beat him in an argument. He hates Wikipedia, he hates peer-to-peer filesharing ("freetards!"), he hates basically anything popular or successful or fashionable. Which all serves to explain why, above all else, he really, really hates Twitter.

In fact, Orlowski hates Twitter, and its users, so much that he decided to summon up all of his trollish powers to write an article hacking Twestival, and its charitable intentions, to death. Faced with a forest of positive statistics and coverage of the event, he sniffed around – like a pig nudging aside truffles in search of a turd – until finally he dug up a single negative fact. Donations to Twestival's online radio station, Twestival.fm, had failed to reach their $20K target, with pledges coming in at a little over $4K. Compared to the huge totals pledged through other channels, it was an irrelevant disappointment. An irrelevant disappointment on which Orlowski based his entire coverage of the event.

I quote ...

"A much-trumpeted charity event called 'Twestival' (from the people who brought you blooks, perhaps) received breathless coverage worth hundreds of thousands of pounds this week. 175 cities around the world took part. And it's raised just a measly $4,180 from the Twestival.fm pledge … According to one Twitterer at the Guardian, Twestival is 'a global charity event that has become the Live Aid of the tech world'. Um, let's hope not, since $4,000 isn't going to save many lives."

He then went on to liken the event to the famous The Day Today sketch where Chris Morris's newsreader tears strips off the organiser of a jam festival because she only raised £1,500.

Even putting aside the fact that, actually, $4,000 would save quite a lot of lives (and resisting the urge to add "you little prick" to the end of that fact), I find Orlowski's attitude breathtaking. So rabid is his hatred of Twitter and the people who use it that he doesn't care – possibly doesn't even notice – that he's taking the piss out of a huge charity effort. It's actually made me sick to read. How sick? You can read my correspondence with Orlowski on my blog.

But here's the even more sickening thing – Orlowski's attitude may be wrong, but it's far from unique. Here at the Guardian, Jemima Kiss's coverage of Twestival received similar bile from a small-ish selection of readers.

One commenter – "Plissken" – complained that "the people involved says it all, really", referring to the fact that several of the people quoted in Kiss's piece work in, gasp, marketing. "Itchybollix" agreed, asking whether "looking at that front-page photo should it be 'twatter'?" Seriously – what the hell is wrong with these people? Is it really more important for them to attack the people who use Twitter than to admit that, while they may not be a fan of the medium, the message it sends out with events such as Twestival can be pretty incredible?

Yes it is, but not for the reasons you might think. What's really going on – with Orlowski, with the commenters, with all of the techno-trolls who dismiss any coverage of Twitter, and Facebook and Wikipedia and web 2.0 services in general with a passion that borders on romantic hate – is not an expression of hate. But of fear.

For as long as these people can remember, they've been the early adopters. The kings of the cyber hill. The people who learned everything there was to know about new technology precisely because the crowd didn't know it. That's where they got their sense of worth and power: by knowing something no one else did. (You see a similar attitude in magicians. A lot of them are wankers too. And I should know, I used to be one. Long story.) For all of Orlowski and co's snide allusions to the "Nathan Barleys" who use Twitter, what they fail to realise is that it's actually they who are the Nathans – the pathetic self-parodies who take great pains to hate things, just because the masses like them.

(In fact, there are several ironies in Twitter haters appropriating the character of Nathan Barley to try to make their point, given that Charlie Brooker, Barley's co-creator, has embraced Twitter with both arms. Also, it's worth noting that one of the writers on that "jam festival" episode of The Day Today was Graham Linehan, who now organises a Bad Movie Club on Twitter. I mean, if you're going to use other people's jokes, like some simpering fanboy, to make your anti-Twitter points, do at least try to ensure those joke writers aren't huge Twitter fans.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, these old-school early adopters have suddenly found their special, secret world is being blown apart. Ordinary people – office workers, journalists, postmen and – yes – PR people – are embracing new technology in their droves, and what matters to them is not how these magical new tools work, but how they can be used to make the world a more interesting place. Or, in extreme cases such as Twestival, a better place. Geek has gone mainstream.

But rather than moving with the times and welcoming this new era of mass technological accessibility, people such as Orlowski stand their ground, waving their fists, yelling and cursing like elderly lunatics. "You young whippersnappers with your wiki-fiddling and your twatter and your stupid haircuts, you look ridiculous … and call this music? It's just noi…", totally oblivious to the truth that each passing day brings them closer to total irrelevance. Sans teeth, sans iPhones, sans everything.

Until this reality hits them, all the rest of us can do is watch and point and laugh. Oh, and perhaps one other thing: if I were Amanda Rose or one of the other organisers of Twestival, I'd send Orlowski a thankyou card. Thanks to his preposterous hack job of a column, the vast majority of sane Register readers who automatically believe the opposite of whatever Orlowski spews are surely now flooding to the Charity: water Twestival site to find out more about ways to get involved. You're probably planning to do the same yourself. To save you the hassle of Googling, the address is http://www.charitywater.org/twestival.

Twestival might be over, but it's never too late to donate whatever you can afford. If not because it'll save lives and make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, then because it will annoy the living fuck out of Andrew Orlowski.

And that's an uncharity gift that will just keep on giving.

[Technology editor's note: Twestival.com presently reports that it has raised more than $250,000 in total, with about 80 cities still to report.]

• Paul Carr is author of a book. But you shouldn't buy it this week. Instead, you should donate to Charity: water. Do it. Do it now.