Rather ironic then, that a notification flashed up during the meal regarding a tweet I'd posted 4 hours before. Here is my tweet, reproduced in all its offensive, vile, outrageously nasty glory:
A natural reading of that would probably suggest I'm gently mocking myself for my musical tastes. I like the same music that teenage girls do. The tear rolling down my sad face at the end (the emoticon) quite possibly indicates this is not a statement that is meant to be taken entirely seriously and that it's quite light-hearted. Also the fact I'm tweeting this in all likelihood indicates that actually I don't regard liking Lawson or Boyzone to be a crime. It's the light-hearted fluff I'm wont to tweet and clearly not the most profound tweet that I've ever produced. However, it led to this response from a follower, who was someone I'd never spoken to, which said "it's amazing the contempt in which teenage girls are held. That you deride yourself by saying you're like one. Sad huh?"
No, I kind of disagree.
1) Are teenage girls really a persecuted minority? 2) Does the fact I've just driven 200 miles to attend an event for one prima facie suggest I share this supposed contempt on a personal level? 3) Why should I have to justify myself / what in general gives you the god-given right to criticise me in this way, and what response do you expect? A block was all that resulted, but it was enough to put me in a bad mood for a good 15 minutes. Thanks: you're so much a better person than I am for tweeting me this and upsetting a perfectly lovely evening.
Telling People Off: Everyone's Favourite New Twitter Pastime
Point 3 is what this blog post is about and the above is just one recent, silly, but irritating example of it. Criticising others has, in my experience, become endemic on Twitter. You hear time and again "Twitter has changed". This is the biggest change I can identify: people attacking others for their views or more specifically the manner in which they express themselves. Word censorship, if you like.
I'm not referring to pointless political arguments which go on hours: they have been on Twitter ever since Noah landed on Mount Ararat and sent his first tweet. I'm still to be convinced in 140 characters that immigration is a bad idea, or that austerity is a good one. Similarly I doubt anyone has ever been convinced by my tweets. Links to news articles, or blogs: perhaps. Tweets, rarely. It is a feature of the medium that people exchange views, argue, and leave more convinced of their own opinions than before. Fine, it's not for me, but I've no issue with it.
I'm talking instead about people criticising and sometimes attacking others for their use of language and daring to express themselves in the natural terms that people do every day across the country. I've seen it time and time again: people leaping on others and chastising them as if they were small children who had been naughty for the words they have used.
Some Examples
There seems to be a whole set of words on Twitter that are entirely VERBOTEN*:
"Hysterical" is now not permitted, because when it entered the English language around 1610, it had its etymological origins in the word hystericus (Latin, of the womb). It has clearly been unwittingly used since before WW2 to mean "very funny" by millions of closet misogynists, women amongst them - but now it must be expunged from the vocabulary of Twitter because a self-appointed language policing panel has declared it unacceptable.
I was attacked for my use of "nannying" by a well known member of the TWITTER TALIBAN** (who doesn't follow me) when I retweeted a blog that had this word in it. Apparently I was /sexist/ for repeating it. Never mind that there are male nannies and it has a very natural, widely accepted meaning that is neither sexist nor offensive to 99% of the population. I was able to escape and was very fortunate not to have a Twatwah issued against me in all the circumstances.
Twitter has been superbly informative for me in helping me understand, and share on a daily basis, the experiences of people with mental health issues. I've seen blogs that have moved me and made me realise how little understanding there is more widely in society regarding this subject. People, particularly with depression, for some reason seem to find the medium a "safe place" to break down the silence and challenge the stigma. Wonderful.
But my god... do not ever use a word on Twitter as people do in completely natural everyday speech without the slightest intent to disparage those with MH issues. I give you the examples of using "manic" to describe your day at work, or call something "madness". You will instantly be cast into the fiery pit of ableist hell if the wrong person sees your use of them on Twitter. I saw one person lecturing another recently about the other's use of "delusional" and "idiot"***. Both words are apparently now Verboten because they are abelist vocabulary.
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| BAN THIS OFFENSIVE FILTH. BURN IT. IT IS SICK. |
"Cretin" started as a medical term. It was originally well-meant: it is from the French word for "Christian" and implied that someone with severe intellectual impairment still deserved to be treated with human dignity. It was dropped from medical usage when it began to become an insult. The same has happened to moron and any other number of terms including of course retard and retardation (which simply means to be held back, and is actually still a World Health Organization actual medical term). It is the so-called euphemism treadmill: whatever term is chosen by the medical profession for intellectual impairment, it eventually becomes perceived as an insult and has to be replaced.
What word are we now to use, Twitter, to describe someone who has done something stupid, and how soon will it become abelist to do so? Interestingly I've a real life friend who has been sectioned twice, who has blogged brilliantly on her experiences, in the process no doubt helping and educating many, and who light-heartedly refers to herself as a "loony" on Twitter. I'd love one of the Twaliban to stumble on her by accident one day, and watch her response if they attacked her for her own very deliberate choice of language.
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| (Thanks @thesaharadesert for the image) |
A lovely, liberal, lefty friend of mine was laid into for hours for describing a woman on TV as having arms like hams. I'm still not entirely sure what her crime was. Swineism? I could go on and on... the mob does after all.
What's Happening?
What is happening is that people for some reason have decided to take upon themselves the task of policing the language of others. Those others may be friends, they may be (and frequently are) complete strangers. I have serious doubts that these Twitter Police behave like this in "normal" life, by seeking to enforce their personal linguistic preferences on people such as work colleagues or strangers in the street. It is worth emphasising that is all they are: personal linguistic preferences that they have created.
Twitter provides a uniquely suitable medium for this, because they can safely and bravely fire off tweets from their keyboards. They have already formed a like-minded group of people in their followers. One passive aggressive ".@" mention is all it takes to assemble their troops and rapidly form a mob to dictate what another individual may and may not say. If you are encouraging your followers to get involved in this way over someone's use of language, you are to me a bully. Nothing more, and nothing less.
It is in essence all about making yourself right and someone else wrong. There may be personal reasons for this: latent passive-aggression, low self-esteem, wanting attention, feeling you gather followers if you are the centre of a Twitter storm by doing this to a high-profile tweeter, personal dislike of the target, proving how "right on" you are to your followers - or whatever. But what you are doing is essentially saying "See, I'm better than you. I get to determine what language you use. I'm right, you're wrong." Many are permanently, and almost professionally, outraged.
[I am of course aware that there is a certain irony in my writing this blog, the whole purpose of which is making me right and them wrong, but there we go. None of us is perfect ;-) ]
This is a key thing to remember too: the Twaliban member is frequently taking offence on behalf of unnamed people in a group who might theoretically be hurt if they read the guilty party's tweet, which contains language that they don't approve of. But by sending them an @ message on Twitter to make them wrong, they are definitely going to upset an actual someone to a lesser or greater degree.
What's Missing?
There's a whole load of stuff missing in this behaviour. One is respecting that other people have a right to express themselves in any way they choose, provided it doesn't infringe the law. That would fall under the basic heading of "tolerance". If you don't like what someone has tweeted, you can of course :
- ignore it (if it's someone you like)
- unfollow them (if it's someone who has done this a few times)
- block them (if you never want to see this again)
The next thing missing is agreement on what is offensive. My friend who has been sectioned does not find "loony" offensive. You might. My 72 year old mother might use the word "twat" interchangeably with "twit". People in the South of England generally do. The Prime Minister did so and it was confirmed that this is not a swear word under Radio Guidelines. You might be from the USA or from the North of England, where "twat" is synonymous with "cunt" and is just as strong. You might actually like the word "cunt" and use it regularly in your tweets because you consider it a good feminist term. Others might not and would find it a lot more offensively sexist than my use of "nannying". You might object to people calling Mrs Thatcher a witch (I don't like it personally and wouldn't use it): others would disagree and say it's harmless. So it goes on.
One thing is sure: language is a diverse, powerful, creative thing and if you try to set precise parameters of what it acceptable and what is not, you will be the only person who agrees with them. People will disagree with you and they are entitled to do so. We all have different standards regarding what we think is okay or not. Yours are inherently no better than mine.
Then we come to appreciation of the medium. By "calling someone out" on Twitter, if you stop for a moment to think about it, you are presumably aware that other people will see this (e.g. mutual followers or all your followers if you opt for the passive aggressive "shout out" method). Do you enjoy being criticised in public, often in front of your friends? I don't - but hey, perhaps I'm just weird. There are two ways round this: you might direct message the person. Chances are a quietly put, polite private word will have much more actual effect on getting the person to consider what they've said, rather than chastising someone in public, which almost always will raise heckles. If you aren't on good enough terms to be mutually following, how about putting your point generally, rather than attacking a specific individual by naming them? It's just a suggestion, and of course you're free to ignore it.
The last thing missing is intent and context (which often includes humour). Before you leap on someone and accuse them of all manner of things because of something they tweeted, you might well keep in mind that these things are key components of how language works. If my boyfriend calls me a "stupid poof" in a tweet, that is very different to a homophobic threatening lout screaming it across the road at me. Ofcom even rejected a complaint about the use of "retard" on TV because they said "it was not used in an offensive context [...] and had been used light-heartedly". Having seen the particular context, I'm not sure I'd personally agree with them, but the point is that intent is highly relevant, even with a word that most people would agree is inherently offensive.
Effect on Free Speech
If you've never experienced being told off on Twitter for your language, good for you. I know it's a complaint that many share though. I'm mainly friends with other left-leaning people that I would consider caring and not at all reckless about upsetting others. They, like I, would certainly not go out of their way to do so deliberately - yet they feel censored, told off, and limited in their free speech. This is both in respect of voicing an opinion, and their specific use of language.
The following tweet, which expressed my frustration at being labelled a hater of teenage girls for my perfectly well-intentioned and innocuous tweet above, certainly seemed to strike a chord with plenty from the number of retweets:
You might just say: well you choose to put things out on the Internet, suck it up. You'd have a point, but I choose to come on Twitter for fun, to talk to my friends, express myself, read what others are up to etc. I do genuinely think I have the right not to be told off repeatedly for my language, mainly by strangers, when I am hardly tweeting the most offensive content. I left Twitter for 2 months earlier this year in part because of this. I honestly think that's pretty shite.
I'm aware of a growing body of people who have been on Twitter for years who have a second, locked account, just for their friends. I've heard it called the "second wave" of Twitter: they made wonderful friends on "big" Twitter, but there are so many people on there who love taking offence that some no longer consider it safe to be themselves and speak freely, unless they're feeling 100% robust and up for a fight. Jesus, that's really quite disturbing in my view. People are scared to speak on a medium that's all about the free flow of thought and speech. Thanks, Twaliban, what a service you're providing.
* I'm sure using the word "Verboten" lays me open to charges of anti-German racism. Again I say to you, please keep your judgements to yourself. I'm actually really not that interested in hearing your opinion. I'm half-German, love the place, and despite having spent half of my life there, amazingly managed to keep a sense of humour. Develop one yourself?
** I'm sure using the word "Twitter Taliban" lays me open to charges of belittling the suffering of victims of the actual Taliban in Afghanistan. I will self-flagellate for hours, fear not - you don't need to tweet me to point out what a terrible person I am, and how oblivious I am to the suffering of others.
*** The two people involved in the public conversation I've referenced have tried to leave comments on this blog telling me to "fuck off" and "mind my own fucking business". I deliberately did not name or identify them in the post: they simply illustrate to me an idiotic stance regarding language that I don't agree with. One asked me to remove this part of the post, or to make clear she was happy to be lectured to. Fine: she was happy to be told off in public. Plenty of people aren't. The two are rather neatly proving my point by sending me the type of personal abuse that people are entirely fed up of.
