It's Been Fun

I deleted my Twitter account a couple of weeks ago to take a break and think about whether I still wanted to engage in social media.  The immediate trigger for that was someone I thought was an actual friend deliberately being a nasty jerk to me online (subtweeting about my search for a new puppy after losing my dog Oscar, no less...), but I've taken a step back and thought about the bigger picture.

I've had some wonderful times on Twitter and with blogging over the last five years or so.  I've seen Twitter grow from a tiny community where everyone seemed to know each other into a much broader and more popular way of communicating.  In some ways that's a great thing: it's supposed to be about the free flow of ideas, chatting to people in all fields of life that you might not ordinarily have access to, and broadening your horizons.  I've met up with about 200 people from Twitter in real life and developed some lovely friendships.  I've even met the boyfriend of my dreams on here, and in Spring we'll be celebrating three years together.  Somehow I've picked up just shy of 5000 followers, even though I really don't have that much of substance to tweet about.

However, I've noticed that Twitter has also lost much of its innocence over the years.  It's become a place where there's a lot of abuse and nastiness just because people "can".  I remember the shock of this type of thing happening the first time and how it sent ripples of upset through the community I knew online.  Now we've become numbed to it: people throw out threats, abuse, hatred, take it onto themselves to language/thought police strangers, and argue endlessly for absolutely no constructive purpose whatsoever.  It's only the very worst stuff that gets any attention.  The constant low-level criticism, judgmentalism and fractious abusive sniping doesn't even register any more.   It may be amplified for me because of the "curse of the 2000 followers" that people talk about: your tweets get retweeted outside your familiar circle much more widely above this level, and it invites people who don't know you to kick off aggressive arguments and attacks.  Whatever the reason, I'm experiencing it more and more.  I just don't come online to receive abuse from strangers; and even if you block them straight off, a bit of a bitter taste remains.

As an example of this, two weeks ago I had a serious of four anonymous trolling comments on this blog, apropos nothing, calling me a "fucking sodomite", an "anti-white bigoted cunt", a "Muslim lover", telling me to go back to my "London shit-hole and die of AIDS surrounded by my immigrant chums" and calling me "a Euro-loving, bum-banging, left-wing, immigrant-loving, shirt-lifting cunt".  It contained a number of threats and ended by wishing that a Muslim cut "my fucking head off".  This was from someone purporting to live in my sleepy little home village in Suffolk, which I seriously doubt.  The funny thing is of course I'm pretty middle of the road politically, and hardly a raving Marxist.  God knows what type of abuse those we tweet or blog regularly on political matters attract.  In one respect it's all completely laughable, but on another it's not exactly pleasant to receive on a Saturday morning, even if I know it shouldn't be taken seriously, and it's just a keyboard warrior wanking him or herself into a frenzy.  I'd like to say this was an isolated example, but it's not: it's happened before, and it will happen again. 

I am also capable of putting it into context and know that the nastiness online is less than 1% of all the interactions I have.  This blog has had over 640,000 views since I set it up in January 2011 with my first piece, which was a eulogy to my then recently deceased grandmother.  That's an average of about 5000 readers per post of my 135 articles, which is staggering.  So many people have commented kindly on my thoughts and writing, and I've loved the positive feedback.  It genuinely makes me happy that people want to read what I have to say, and that they want to share it with others. 

On the other hand, it is the 1% that sticks in your mind, even if it shouldn't.  I'm so blessed to have a pretty wonderful "real" life.   I have a beautiful home, travel huge amounts, have a lovely family, good friends, am materially well-off and in great health, our work project to build a gorgeous luxury farm spa retreat is progressing beautifully.  I have a boyfriend I adore and we're about to finally get a new collie puppy together, which just fills me with excitement and happiness.

All that being the case, I have to ask myself why I should let my "real life" be polluted by the online nastiness, the homophobic abuse, and the judgements of others, none of which I would otherwise ever experience offline.  I'd simply never put up with this to my face from friends, family, colleagues or strangers -  so I've started querying why I should voluntarily allow notifications to flash up on my phone with this thing.  Another aspect is that although I'm not the one sending this stuff, I do feel it is my responsibility if I allow it to continue.  If it's bothering me, I should move away from the harm.  And if I conduct a simple cost/benefit analysis of my whole online experience, I'm afraid the costs now outweigh the benefits for me. 

Therefore, it's time to close up shop and delete my account for good.  I'll let the minority of unpleasant people I've come across stew in their own unhappiness and unpleasantness.  I just don't want or need to be part of it.  I know others feel very differently about Twitter and I hope you go on enjoying it as much as I once did.  I really like and care about many of you who be reading this.  I'm sorry if you'll miss me, and I'm sure I'll miss you too.

As for my blog, there's little point in continuing to blog on a regular basis, as my posts won't ever get the readership they did before without a platform to promote them.  That said, I'd like this to be farewell, but not goodbye - so I will be writing the odd personal blog post from time to time if anyone is interested, with updates on the farm project, pictures of the puppy, and photos of our various adventures abroad (For a start, Ste is meeting my entire German family just before Christmas for the first time.  The only German he knows is what I taught him, namely: when you sneeze and someone says "Gesundheit", you answer "Kartoffelsalat".  That might not be entirely correct, so this could be interesting).   You're more than welcome to drop by here and have a look.  I've disabled anonymous comments though, as that's one thing I definitely won't miss. 

Thanks to anyone who's ever interacted with me pleasantly on Twitter, who's amused or cheered me up, taught me something new, or who I've got to know well enough to have considered an online friend.

And as ever, thanks for reading my blog.

Macht's gut!

Peter

[Insert suitably cheesy smiling pic]

Fé

GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: Bjarki Markússon

(The title word fé means sheep, and also money)

This photo is just so gorgeous and so appropos of today's wild weather on the Lava Rock somehow!
Bjarki, a trained photographer and creator of groovydirty electro, among other things, writes:

The story behind the photo. This picture was taken in September at Skeiðaréttum in Skeiða-og Gnúpverjahreppi. This is when all the sheeps are rounded up after the summer. Each sheep is marked with a tag and is then found by its owner. I took my kids there and I try to go every year. This picture is taken while I'm on my knees with my arms around my 3 year old daughter so the sheep don't run her down. The view is from her perspective. 

I personally adore the composition and the colors in this shot, and knowing the stories about our guest photographer's photos always makes them even more alive.

Remember our Facebook Fan Page as well as our Twitter feed, both of which you can now easily follow by gently tapping the little blue circles up there in the right-hand corner : ) I try to find and post non-mainstream stuff there as well as images that don't make it onto the blog, so be sure not to miss out on your daily dose of Iceland Eyes.

Thanks - Half a Million!

This blog started in January 2011, just over 2.5 years ago.  I'd written several "twitlongers" on various subjects (mainly legal or political points) and people were encouraging me to write a proper blog instead.  I thought that kind of them, but that it would be a little self-important of me.  I also wondered who on earth would want to read my musings.

Then, my grandmother died.  I was in shock, to be honest, and just really wanted to get the story of her life on record and to share it, and various photos of her life in West Prussia, with my friends and followers.  I sat there and didn't stop until I'd written it all, in one go.  The result was my first blog post.  I found writing that piece incredibly therapeutic.

I wrote it both for me, and to share it with others.  That's exactly the spirit of all my posts since: I often really enjoy setting out my thoughts on things, and find that ordering them in the form of a post helps me work out what I actually think.  It's a bit like essay writing, which I loved so much at school and university, except I get to choose the title.  Frequently I really enjoy it, sometimes I find it cathartic and healing, and I miss it when I'm do busy to do a post.

I write about all sorts, from abseiling lesbians, a practical guide to Twitter (it's not just for beginners!), Julian Assange, thoughts on absence, gratitude and loss and to the serial fraudster I helped uncover, Matthew Brown.

"Daddy's on his bloody computer again, rather than walking ME"

I tend to steer away from politics (too much strife and argument) and from law (I don't know enough about it any more, not having practiced in years).  Often it's deeply personal: sometimes a bit too personal and I've removed two posts subsequently for that reason.  People online tend to be very kind and good, but I've had some nastiness in a couple of comments and I don't want to attract that if I can avoid it.  Sometimes I think "Oh god, now I've written that I don't have anything else to say and probably won't blog again".  Then something pops into my mind, usually when I'm walking Oscar, I plan it in my head, and I write the thing out.

I don't have advertising on my blog: it's for pleasure not money-making.  I'd personally feel a bit cheap if I were promoting my stuff to get a few pence back in advertising revenue.  I'm flattered when people give me positive feedback and of course I love it when posts are RT'd.  I write for my own pleasure, but of course I like others to read it too.  If no one read my posts, there would still be value in it, but it adds something big when others enjoy them too.  I like the blog to be colourful and fun: I shove in loads of pictures and I often make the tone a little tongue in cheek.

I'm genuinely so humbled that I've just hit an amazing 500,000 views on the blog.  I've been watching the little counter going round this morning and am so glad I managed to screen shoot it.  That's an average of over 16,000 hits a month since January 2011, which is heck of a lot of hits on a private blog about nothing in particular.  I do only have 4500 followers on Twitter, so I wonder where all the traffic comes from at times.

Anyway, thank you, all of you who have ever read, RTd, or commented on here.  You've actually made me enormously happy.  Here's to a million! *beams from ear to ear*

Peter x

Trolls and the Twitter Boycott

As Twitter's popularity has grown, so has the number of people who use it as a platform to abuse, threaten and generally be vile to strangers.  Its great strength is also its great weakness: it is an incredibly democratic and easy way to access anyone else with an account, be they a national journalist, an Olympic diver, a politician, or a woman who has campaigned to get Jane Austen onto the £10 note.

Yesterday we saw the latter, Caroline Criado-Perez, drawing attention to the fact she had received "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours" and said she had "stumbled into a nest of men who co-ordinate attacks on women".

Block And Ignore

It's all to easy to say "block and ignore".  I think people who do so genuinely mean well: it's a way of reaching out, saying that they empathise and trying to reassure you that you can easily make it go away.  The problem is that you can't just erase the memory of some hideous comment that's been made to you, and even if you've blocked one of them it's a bit like bashing down mole hills.  Another one will soon follow.  I still remember vile tweets sent to me from years back, and I certainly haven't ever been subjected to 50 abusive tweets an hour.  I can't imagine what that must feel like.

It's so often our instinct in life to say "there, there, it will be fine" when something bad happens, but often that just frustrates and angers further.  If I've just fallen over and broken my arm I want some proper sympathy and to voice my hurt and upset, not for someone to say "there, there" and point out the obvious, that in a few months it may (or may not) have healed up properly.

Feeding Trolls

We also then come onto the issue of whether or not to "feed the trolls".  The argument goes that if you don't engage they will go away and/or they're only sending the abuse to get a reaction.  Both aspects of this might be correct, but it's also true that some will send continued abuse regardless of reaction, and even if you don't respond they will still have the satisfaction of knowing the tweet appeared in your @ mentions until they are blocked.

Further, why shouldn't you engage if someone sends you abuse?  It may not be the most sensible strategy (who knows?), but if someone is unpleasant to me I don't just let it pass.  I respond.  In this case it's rather akin to victim blaming: we're specifically talking about a woman who has dared to have an opinion and who has successfully organised a campaign.  She (and others who attempt to show her solidarity) are threatened with sexual violence.  Why shouldn't they challenge the man, if it makes them feel in any way better?  To say that they then bring subsequent abuse upon themselves just strikes me as wrong and deeply un-empathetic.  We should unequivocally be telling the person who abuses that they are in the wrong, not the person who is receiving the abuse.  It's a little bizarre to even need to spell that out.

It's Twitter's Fault

It's very tempting to see the problem here as being the medium, rather than the people using it.  To some extent it's true: Twitter has given us the ability to communicate instantly and easily in a way not previously available.  But let's be clear: Twitter of itself does not encourage this type of abusive behaviour.  Hundreds of millions of people use it daily and manage not to send this kind of thing.

It is a human issue that some men feel threatened by women and think it amusing to launch off rape threats in response.  To ditch your Twitter account in response is like getting rid of your telephone because you've had someone heavy breathing down the line.  It's not the telephone's fault: it's the freak who's making the call.  Telephones also facilitate billions of happy, useful, mundane and funny communications too.  The problem here is societal, not digital.

Report Abuse Button

People are rightly upset and frustrated at what is happening with the repeated abuse that is going on.  Just because Twitter doesn't encourage the abuse, doesn't mean it can't do something to stop it.  There's an online petition to get a "report abuse" button added.  Like many others, I felt angry at what was going on yesterday, signed it and retweeted the link.  None of us wants to feel impotent and to just ignore something like this.  The existing "Report spam" button does not fit the problem and it ignores the fact that very real, upsetting, offensive abuse, not spam, is the problem.

My attitude was a bit like my attitude to speed cameras.  I don't tend to speed, so why should I be bothered by their presence?  It's only people who send out abuse who have anything to be concerned about.  It may genuinely help, in the way that I think speed cameras do have an effect on people breaking the law.  With a little reflection, I realised that there are big practical problems with this approach, however.

It requires a level of policing by Twitter that is unlikely to happen without a hefty subscription fee.  The following statistic demonstrates it clearly: the Guardian employs 12 full time moderators.  Twitter would have to employ 24,000 to police with the same level of activity.  They would have to be multi-lingual, or there would have to be different teams for different countries. 

Moreover, do we want 24,000 people monitoring our tweets?  The scope for abuse is immense.  If you don't like someone you report them for abuse in an attempt to get their account suspended.  As a matter of principle, why should someone be the judge and jury over what it is acceptable to say or not?  Rape threats clearly fall way over the unacceptable line.  Does telling someone to "fuck off", or using the C-word?  What would be the procedure for appeal if you disagree?

The beauty of Twitter, which is in fact a liberal dream fulfilled, is the ability for people to be able to communicate freely across most borders.  The concept that what is said should be policed by a non-judicial authority is one that needs to be thought out very carefully indeed.

Twitter and the Police

Given the statistics above, it is easy to see why, practically and above all commercially, Twitter prefers the "leave it to others to police" route.  It does have a "report abuse" mechanism, but I know from experience how slow and ineffective this method is.  When I received tweets saying "YOU GAY FAGGOT BUM BOY - PERHAPS WE SHOULD KILL YOU INSTEAD." and "YES- MURDER YOU." Twitter did absolutely nothing instant.  The report goes off to the US and they take about 2 weeks to action it - by which time the person had deleted his account.  Hooray, that made me feel better.

Therefore Twitter falls back on the line that people must comply with local laws.  Caroline Criado-Perez reported her abuse to the Police.  Much of it no doubt did constitute offences under English law.  The problem again is, however, limited resources.  The Police must assess what threats are credible.  They cannot investigate each and every vile tweet, with the best will in the world, nor could the courts process it.  Much abuse comes from anonymous accounts - to "unmask" the operators is a difficult operation that involves going to court in California, followed by investigations and prosecution here.

It's a bit of an understatement to say that I did not enjoy getting homophobic tweets threatening to murder me, but I would genuinely rather that my local force use its resources to combat other crime in my area than this non-credible threat on Twitter from someone who did not even know where I live. 

Annual Subscription

Many accounts that send abuse are set up mainly or solely for that purpose.  Let's take this bright spark for example (I've deliberately picked a typical troll account, but by no means one of the most offensive ones that are using sexual violence in their comments):

And then look at the number of followers, the number of tweets, and the fact he still has an egg as his avatar.  It takes minutes to set this up, using a (relatively) non-traceable email account such as Hotmail.  There's a very good likelihood "Bruce" has a regular account from which he tweets normal things; he's just using this account to vent his hatred of women that he probably realises it isn't acceptable to do from an account where he could be identified.  Chances are his girlfriend or mother might be a bit unimpressed, for a start.

A big issue with the "report abuse button" is that even if it operated properly and an account such as the above were instantly suspended, there would be absolutely nothing to stop "Bruce" from setting up another account a moment later. 

Caitlin Moran has suggested she would happy to pay £30 a year to have a "safe network" in place of the existing Twitter.   It would certainly be necessary to have a substantial subscription fee to employ the sizeable army of people working to police abusive tweets.  It would also be necessary to have a fee to stop people from setting up repeated abuse accounts.  The "report abuse" button idea is of itself of very limited use in stopping the problem.  It gives us the important comfort that Twitter is doing something and acknowledges this serious issue, but for as long as accounts are free to set up and operate, it will solve little.

I'm sure others would agree with Caitlin that £30 is a reasonable fee if it stops misogynistic and other abuse.  They would pay it.  I probably would too, if push came to shove: I pay a lot more for my mobile subscription a year, or for my home internet.

Plenty, however, would not.  We wealthy Westerners praise the role of social media in the organising of demonstrations, for example in the Middle East, yet many of these people would be shut out of using this democratic medium if there were a fee of this level.

One Off Registration Fee

My own suggestion is a little more modest.  If each new account had to pay a nominal one-off fee (say £3 or £5) on registration this would certainly help deal first of all with the multiple spam accounts that occasionally plague Twitter.  It might also help cut down on repeat abuse accounts such as "Bruce" above.  Some idiots will happily pay a fiver a time to abuse others, but the second they are blocked they cannot abuse that person again.  They will have to pay £5 each time for the privilege of dishing out their oh-so-hilarious rape jokes.

This being Twitter, when I expressed this idea, I was instantly told that £5 is a lot to people in Africa, or indeed to some in the UK, and was accused of taking part in a "middle class platform".  One of the people doing so was a lecturer whose latest photo in her stream was of a very expensive looking plasma screen.  How I've missed Twitter the last month I've been away.  Glorious.

Yes, I'm not actually a complete moron and realise that a one-off fee of £5 is a reasonable sum of money to some people.  It is, however, a darn side less than an annual fee of £30 that Caitlin suggests, and would I think achieve a similar aim, without the army of censors working with all the disadvantages that involves.  I also think that paying £5 (remember: new accounts only was the suggestion) is fair enough, given the very real wrong of women receiving 50 abuse tweets every hour.  Some people sadly won't be able to afford that, but for those who have access to the internet (by definition all Twitter users) most will.

Fighting Back

I'm also realistic enough to realise that a £5 registration fee suggested by little PME on his blog isn't going anywhere... but it's an idea.  The point is we are angry, we are frustrated, and we don't want this medium that we enjoy so much ruined by a group of Neanderthal dick-heads.

So, we come to the boycott idea.  It is that on 4 August people stop tweeting for a day to register their protest that Twitter isn't taking this issue seriously enough.  Will it help in practice?  I've no idea (and some considerable doubts), but the fact that it's already been reported on the BBC with quotes from Stella Creasy MP, suggest to me it's already being effective in at least highlighting the issue.

Some people will argue and say that it's giving in to the abusers, others will tell off those who fail to observe it.  I probably won't be tweeting that day to show that I support those who have received such abuse: it's the least I can do.  I don't expect it to suddenly change society and I'm not going to be chastising others with different views: do as you feel fit.  As long as you agree that enough is enough, and this type of discourse is grotesque and unacceptable, you're on my team.

Finally we come to the other aspect of fighting back.  It's registering our disgust, and showing our support for the people receiving the abuse.  This wonderful article in New Statesman by Caroline Criado-Perez highlights not just the trolls, but the amount of positive tweets she has received.  It takes a moment to send her, or Suzanne Moore, or Helen Lewis, or any of the other women who regularly receive this type of abuse on Twitter a tweet of support.  We can all do that.

I'm also aware that the guys sending the sexual abuse seem to get off on it when a woman responds.  I've found that if another man challenges them they seem to go a bit quiet and they enjoy it less.  Ask them how funny they'd find it if their mother, sister, wife or girlfriend were getting rape jokes every hour and see if they respond.  They need to know other men don't think this is okay.  Again, we can all do that.

Criticism: Telling People Off on Twitter

Last Sunday I was having a fabulous time at a party: it was the Bat Mitzvah party of the daughter of friends I hadn't seen properly in years.  The place was decked out in pink, with real palm trees with fairy lights, huge ice sculptures on the tables, and the daughter was carried on a litter by male models. It was AMAZING: the best party I've ever been to.  It was as if you'd photographed your dreams - particularly if you're a teenage girl... or a gay bloke who can laugh at himself and appreciates the odd ten-tonne serving of kitsch.

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.

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.  

(Thanks @thesaharadesert for the image)

My suggestion also for the punishment of the unnamed senior Tory who recently called Conservative Association members as "mad swivel-eyed loons" is to give him a Twitter account and make him read the responses of the pack who would lay into him.  These wouldn't be the actual people he'd insulted (the Tories), it would be those who object to his use of English in doing so (the "well-meaning, caring" brigade on Twitter).

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)

You don't have to pick a fight, regard that it's your duty to police language, and assert that you have an inherent right to tell them off about their self-expression.   If you choose to do so (of course, it's your right to), and they tell you to get lost in no uncertain terms, please don't go crying about it (I've seen this too, so many times) - you're the one who started it.  It might also be helpful to remind yourself that you are not actually their parent, or their teacher, and this is another adult you are talking to.

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. 

Twitter Reacts to Barbara Hewson

Barbara Hewson, a barrister, published an article in Spiked Magazine yesterday.  Here it is: if you haven't read it, I suggest you do, rather than relying on media reports about it or what people are saying about it.

Criticism

My views on the article is that it raises a couple of valid points, that are put badly.  One line that suggests abuse victims are to blame for putting themselves in compromising positions is particularly objectionable - another is the belittling of Stuart Hall's offences towards a 9 year old.  The piece is offensive to all sorts of people who battle against rape culture and I understand their outrage.  This is about the best article I've read explaining (in Zoe Stavri's typically passionate terms) why it's so objectionable.  Do please read it, and if you have time this good piece by Peter Tatchell with his very measured, sensible reaction.

[Addendum: Just to make it crystal clear this blog post is not a critique of Hewson's piece.  It's about the reaction the piece received on Twitter.  How shit it was or wasn't, as opposed to the quantity and type of abuse she received as a result of it, are two completely separate issues.  I thought that blindingly obvious, but clearly not from comments I've received.]

Age of Consent

Many people on Twitter have reacted most strongly, however, not to the apparent victim blaming (the aspect of the article that deserves the most attention) but to the final suggestion in the piece that the age of consent be reduced to 13.  This element, that was somewhat bizarrely just thrown in at the very end, is what all of the main stream media focused on in their headlines and formed the basis for almost all of the personal attacks I go on to detail.

Hewson's article raises the suggestion of lowering the age of consent without bothering to explain the (actually quite obvious) implicit missing link: she is talking about consensual sexual acts.  That's why it's called the age of consent.  Currently, as Tatchell explains, two 15 year olds who have sex together are criminalised under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 if they have consensual sex. They can be put on the Sex Offenders Register, alongside rapists.  That is to me, quite simply wrong.

I'm assuming Hewson is suggesting that by removing currently criminalised consensual acts from the equation, the police and courts will have more resources to follow up on cases of non-consensual acts: sexual abuse, assault, and rape of children.  These are inherently far more serious and deserving of attention than consensual acts.  That is true, but it's a shame the article does not spell that out.  Instead it clumsily at least appears to suggest there will be fewer cases of child abuse if the age of consent is shoved down to 13.  That cannot be what any right-minded person thinks. 

Here's a map of Europe showing ages of consent.  The blue colours reflect countries where it's 13, 14 or 15.  You're welcome to disagree and say the age should be 16, and below that age children should not be having sex.  But do not suggest the proposition that the age be lowered below 16 is some outrageous, unthinkable suggestion or a "paedophile's charter".  It's not.  These "blue" countries include the more socially conservative, Catholic nations of Poland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.  Those countries have not set about legalising sex with pre-pubescent children.  It's about deciding where an appropriate age is, and views differ on that even with our closest neighbours.

Don't also think that criminalising teenagers prevents them having sex.  The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles has found that 14 is now the average age of first sexual experience for both gay and straight young people in the UK.  Children are becoming physically mature earlier and are having sex earlier.  You might not like the idea of 14 year olds having sex (I don't think it's great and was 20 when I first slept with someone), but many are - and criminalising them seems to have remarkably little effect on their activities if that's the average age.

Teenage Pregnancy

Nor does criminalising kids having sex together prevent teenage pregnancies.  The factors which cause high teenage pregnancy rates are a lot more complex than the age of consent.  I've set out some figures taken from here:

(Births per 1000 teenage women aged 15-19)

Netherlands 7.7 (age of consent 12/16)
Spain 7.5 (age of consent 13)
Italy 6.6 (age of consent 14)
Denmark 8.8 (age of consent 15)
UK 29.6 (age of consent 16)
USA 55.6 (age of consent 16-18)

The USA teenage birth rate, the country with the highest age of consent in this group, is more than seven times that of Spain where the age of consent is 13.  It also seven times greater than that of Netherlands where the general age of consent is 16, but they will not prosecute two adolescents with a (maximum) 4 year age difference.  That means for example a 17 year old can legally have sex with a 13 year old, but a 25 year old cannot with a 15 year old.  Make that a 3 year age gap and I think it a perfectly sensible policy.  Dutch law categorically does not say adults can have sex with children, which is how I'm sure the likes of the Daily Mail would wish to categorise it, yet in practice it has an age of consent in certain circumstances of 12.  Call them as a bunch of paedos if you will... but you're a fool in my book.

Incidentally, just because the law allows it, does not mean that all Dutch kids are all having sex at 12.  Thanks to their sensible, liberal education policies, they have proper, detailed sex education and are taught to make the choice to have sex when they feel full ready and want to.  The average age of a Dutch girl having sex is apparently 17.5, and it is higher for a boy.  That is the true meaning of consent to me, not some arbitrary rule in law that says a couple of 15 years and 11 months are criminals for having sex together, but an immature adolescent can be pressurised into having sex on her 16th birthday without realising fully what she is doing and that's "okay".  Note that the UK teenage birth rate is four times higher than the Netherlands' one.

So - Hewson's article, which put forward her (poorly unexplained) view that the age of consent should be 13 is not exactly as insane as the baying mob is suggesting and is concentrating almost exclusively on. You might disagree with her, strongly perhaps; but let's be clear, she wasn't suggesting the law should be changed to allow babies to be raped, which anyone might think from the reaction below.

Twitter Shows its Worse Side

So, that little explanation of my personal views on this out of the way, let's turn to how Twitter reacted to Hewson's article.  There were some high profile people like Stavvers and Fleetstreetfox who set out sensible counter-arguments in blogs and articles, and plenty of people who registered their disagreement in strong, but reasonable terms in tweets.

And then there were the others.  They didn't engage as a criticism of her views so much as form a pack-like abuse attack on her. The most relatively benign were the calls for her to be "sacked by her employers" (a bit pointless as barristers are self-employed).  It then went through repeated calling her a paedophile herself, demands for her to be lynched, through to being cut up and having her organs removed.  Sure the latter is almost certainly not a credible threat, but how can anyone think that, let alone type it and then send it someone else?  This is for expressing an opinion.  Disagree with her, strongly, but how does this make you a better person than you think she is?

Apart from the non-gender specific abuse, the special misogyny that is reserved for women who voice their opinion was of course in evidence.  When Hewson tweeted that she had received a rape threat, plenty of people said they did not believe her.  When victims of sexual abuse come forward, many people say that should be believed, but that they are discouraged from speaking up because the system is set up to disbelieve them.  Yet in this case, a woman is not to be believed, because being a "paedo defender" she is somehow bound to be a liar.  If a rape threat didn't come up in a tweet search, ever consider that it may have been deleted or the threat was received via another medium such as email?  I believe she received this threat, particularly given the other abuse she received.

I was also attacked for pointing out that tweets at her were misogynistic.  I'd like to know how calling her an "old hag", a "witch", a "whore", a "sick, crazy bitch", a "paedo loving slag" and a "cunt" and the apparent threat to rape her do not fall into that category, but hey.

If you've got a stomach for it, here we go then - I think this lot should be recorded just as reminder of how grotesque people on this medium can be:

 

[always good when someone misuses "your" when calling someone else a cretin]

[Hung up from a lamp post AND shot? Isn't that tricky to do?]

 

Charming stuff, eh?  A little reminder here.  Victims of abuse may have been rightly upset by reading Hewson's piece.  They no doubt feel it contributes to the deeply ingrained culture that encourages rape and abuse, and does not take their experiences seriously.  I would hope Hewson did not write it to target anyone individually and have no reason to think she did.  She was voicing an opinion, not matter how misconceived you might think it is.

Each one of these abusive tweets is, by contrast, deliberately addressed to her, with the knowledge that she will read them.  That isn't recklessly nasty: it's deliberately and utterly vile.

Easy Books

We all complain when customer service isn't up to scratch, but I'd just like to give an example of the opposite.

I use Easy Books on my MacBook to keep the accounts for our company.  I find it really incredibly easy to use: it's intuitive, user-friendly and very much fits the Mac ethos.  It's also superb that they offer an iOS platform, so my co-director can have real time access to the accounts on his iPhone or iPad.  They're a UK based company and developer.

Twitter: How To Do It

Today I followed the update instructions to download new software.  On trying to use the product, it then crashed whenever I tried to add a transaction.  This is incredibly frustrating: I had a load of transactions to update and the whole product was effectively useless.  You know how "hair tearing" it can be when you want to get a task done and you aren't able to.

I therefore went onto the support part of the Easy Books website and sent a message on Twitter.  This was at 15.21.  They responded exactly one minute later at 15.22.  They told me how to get in touch on the site.  I had actually already registered an issue and provided my email.  Personal emails, addressing me as "Peter" arrived at 15.31, 15.33 and 15.41, to get to the bottom of the issue. 

At 16.13 I had another personal email to let me know the issue had been solved and that a new version of the software was available.  I downloaded it and the problem is indeed solved.  The problem applied just to the Lion version of Mac OS that I'm running.  Here's the exchange:

This is genuinely superb support.  They don't just have a Twitter presence to broadcast mindlessly as many companies do.  They clearly do tweet about their product, but they also react (rapidly), interact with you on Twitter and produce a solution.  You deal with two named people by email: Matthew and Karen.

Couldn't Be Happier

I couldn't be happier with all this.  If you want an excellent Mac Based accounts system (for businesses or private accounts) that's extremely affordable, easy to use and has this Rolls-Royce level of support, you know where to go:  http://easybooksapp.com/

Kudos to Easy Books!



[Disclaimer I'm in no way related to this product as my regular readers will know: this is a genuine customer recommendation]

The Daily Fail

SO much has been said about how utterly hateful and poisonous the Daily Mail is, what else could possibly be written?  Well it's New Year and two stories over the holiday period particularly caught my eye, so here's my personal little contribution.

Sacrifices of a Brave British Mother

Today's serving from the Mail is the first I wish to comment on.  I'm deliberately not going to link to the story directly (more later), so allow me a broad summary.  Clare Campbell, Mail writer, and self-proclaimed "successful author" has fallen on hard times.  Having had an income in 2008 of £100,000 she and her husband put their elder children through private education.  Their youngest son has also been through private nursery, private primary school, and private secondary school.  Now, despite a large drop in income since the recession, they cannot bear to send him to state school to complete his education, because it just did not "seem right".  State schools in their area apparently have mediocre exam results and the boys "slouch round in scruffy uniforms".

Therefore Clare and her husband have gone through their own period of austerity economics.  She provides handy, practical housewifely tips to highlight the substantial belt-tightening the family has been through.  New purchases of designer frocks from Harvey Nicks are out, replaced by the reuse of existing designer pencil skirts and suits that can be "shortened, lengthened or paired with High Street accessories "at very little extra cost".  Her husband now swears by TK Maxx for his fix of designer gear.  Prada fragrance is out for Clare.  A daily visit to Starbucks is replaced by coffee made at home.  Apart from popping in for the rare treat of "the odd bag of posh pasta", she has ditched (delicious!) Waitrose food and started buying groceries at Aldi or Lidl.  Her beautiful flower garden has been turned into a home-grown vegetable patch (sound the "spirit of the War" and "dig on for victory" klaxons).  Meals out are now only permitted in the likes of Pizza Express.

Perhaps most tear-evoking is the fact that annual holidays to Brazil have been replaced by mere city-breaks to Munich.  ALL of this is hardship is being endured in order that her son will not have to go to a state school.

Munich: that dangerous, seedy holiday destination of the penniless

It is of course, frankly extremely easy to piss yourself at the absurdity of this article.  It's hard to see how growing your own vegetables can make much of a dent in a £15,000 a year school bill.  One meal for four in Pizza Express can easily cost more than many families spend on a week on groceries.  People go years without buying new clothes, let alone having expensive designer ones to modify and accessorise with new items from mere "High Street" stores.  Munich is one of the most affluent, chic and luxury cities in Europe, with prices to match.  A week at Butlin's or self-catering in Benidorm it is not.  In a previous Mail article, Clare reveals that she lives in "leafy Wandsworth" where a family Victorian terrace costs around the £1 million mark, property prices are on the rise, and the area is described as a magnet for London's high fliers.  Her neighbours include bankers, doctors, a High Court judge and "retired lady diplomat".

I've never been one for the politics of envy and nor do I gloat at the thought of anyone falling on what they feel are hard times.  Nonetheless, the use of her expression "put my family through this" to describe the economies she has implemented, is self-pitying and shows utter ignorance and even contempt for what literally millions of other families are experiencing.  Times might be relatively tough for her, but for her to be such a vocal sympathy sponge in a national daily is somewhat stomach-churning.

Her personal spending decisions are likewise entirely up to her.  If she has made a private decision to forgo her shopping trips to Harvey Nicks to pay for her son's school fees, fine and dandy.  For her to set herself up in the Daily Mail as some kind of latter day Joan of Arc martyr ("I'll buy food at Lidl and clothes at Primark rather than take my son out of his private school") for having done so just, however, invokes a massive "fuck off" in my book.  I'd also throw into the mix that I went to a not particularly great comprehensive school and it didn't stop my going to Cambridge.  The phrase she uses to describe state schools ("a poverty of expectation") again deserves a similar expletive as it offends the many excellent professionals who work in the state sector.

The reaction on Twitter (and perhaps surprisingly in many of the Mail Reader online comments left on the story) was predictable.  It consisted of a mixture of outrage, amusement and my "go and engage in sexual acts" responses.  Why then publish it?  I'll set out my thoughts after a couple of paragraphs on the second recent story I'd like to highlight.

Gypsies: "We're on our way to Britain"

The front page of the Christmas Eve edition of the Mail was much more their standard fare.  Again, I'm not providing the link: this screen shot and picture further down tell you all you need to know.

Merry Christmas, Love, the Mail

The story deftly combines so many of the paper's attributes into one front page story: exaggeration, anti-EU politics, anti-Eastern Europe xenophobia, anti-gypsy racism, benefit abuse, and British superiority.  The final element is of course FEAR - the lifeblood of the paper which runs through so many of its stories, including the "everything gives you cancer" pieces it is so well known for.  Up to 29 million East Europeans could be on their way to somewhere near YOU and the clock is ticking.

According to the Mail, this tidal wave of immigration (will anyone remain in Romania or Bulgaria?) will not be comprised of be hard-working tradespeople, people prepared to put up with low wages to do menial jobs, or young professionals.  Only those living in the gypsy slums will apparently have the economic ability, forethought and incentive to come here.  Their aim will be not to work, but to claim benefits.  It will only be Britain that is the target for this mass immigration, not the wealthy countries of say Sweden, Denmark, Germany or the Netherlands, some of which are closer, all of which are subject to the same EU rules, and all of which have substantially more generous welfare states.

Presumably everyone knows of the infamous "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!" 1930s Mail headline which praised Mosley's British Union of Fascists.  It appeared around the same time as Lord Rothermere's article in which he predicted that "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany".  I once read another less well known Mail story from this time about the arrival of Jewish refugees in Britain.  What struck me about it is that you could substitute the word "Jew" for "Eastern European immigrant" and the language, rhetoric and content would read just like a modern day Mail story.  The foreign speaking, odd-looking, benefit-seeking Jews have now assimilated and the apocalyptic visions of the Mail have been transferred to a new group to distrust and spread fear and hatred about.  It's a different century but it's the same poisonous bile.

Why Does the Mail Do It?

The answer is really very simple, of course.  They're a business and they are an extremely successful one at that.  Just like any other publication, their revenue has to come either from the sale of hard copy editions, or through advertising revenue.  The Mail is the UK's second largest selling newspaper, with sales of almost 2 million a day, and a readership of over 4.3 million people.  Their obnoxious mixture of fear, hate, prejudice and social aspiration sells to a sector of the primarily lower middle class market that they know so well.

The paper is heavily slanted towards Conservative Party voters and provides them with the fodder that confirms their view of the world.  Stories such as the brave plight and sacrifices shown by Clare Campbell in no longer shopping in Waitrose reinforce the Government's message that we are "all in this together".  Her "sacrifices" show that anyone can get through these austere times if they darn well pull their socks up and dig vegetables in the garden.  She is the embodiment of people "doing the right thing" (to use Cameron's favourite line) and represents the antithesis of Osbourne's mythical millions who keep their blinds down in the morning because they're out of work and on benefits.

The story also provides a not-so-subtle parallel with the simplistic Coalition household economics approach to the national deficit:

But — like Britain itself — although our long-term prospects for financial recovery were good, the balance in our joint bank account remained alarmingly low. We were earning less than a third of what we once had. 

At the same time Campbell provides an odd model for lower middle class Mail readers' social aspirations.  In these austere times it's now cool to be posh and rub shoulders with the great unwashed in Lidl - just as long as certain clear social differentiators are in place.  In this case it is that you live in a £1m home, you're wearing designer dresses that you've altered the hems on, and it's all just to keep your son in private education.  The story even mentions that she bumped into a friend of hers in the local Lidl - and then immediately explains that the friend is from a Pilates class and is married to a hedge-fund manager.  The snobbery is stomach-turning.

They've even managed to find a hoodie wearing gypsy.  Full marks!

The Bulgarian Gypsies story is much simpler.  It is pure fear and xenophobia: the bread and butter of Mail journalism.  They've been doing it for decades and will do it as long as people want to read this type of thing.  The target group will change (they will always be weaker in some way), but the sentiment of dislike of the outsiders is as basic and primitive as cave-dwellers' not liking people who aren't from their tribe.

Neither Clever, Nor Sophisticated

None of this is clever, or sophisticated.  The Mail has been poisoning the minds of generations of Britons for over a century now.  It has been responsible for reinforcing and indeed creating a reality in this country that I abhor.  I say "creating" because taking the example of the EU, I'm quite sure the increase in the unpopularity of the European political project over the last 20 years has been down to a steady supply of negativity and untruths from the Mail (and other right-wing British tabloids) that feeds into the fertile ground of latent prejudices in this country.  This stuff sells because people want to hear it, but it also shapes and entrenches opinions.

The cleverer stuff, however, comes in with the "click-baiting".  In order to sell advertising space, the Mail online has to produce readership statistics.  There will always be people (the same demographic as those who buy the paper) who will read this stuff online.  In addition, however, there is a big group out there who wouldn't ordinarily go near the Mail with a bargepole.  Many of them are well represented on Twitter and they are located just a click away from boosting readerships numbers.  Clicks make points, and "points make prizes" for the owners of the Mail.  This is important stuff in terms of revenue: after the New York Times, the Mail is apparently the world’s second-biggest news site by traffic, with some 40 million unique visitors.

Looking at both recent stories I've highlighted (and in particular the Waitrose Martyr one, which today spurred the creation of the hashtag #prayforclarecampbell) it is hard not to think this is all extremely deliberate and manipulative.  The Mail knows Twitter is out there and that there are many liberal/left leaning people using it.  With each successive hideous piece of writing on the Mail Online, the warnings have been going out on Twitter - do not click on this, it's just deliberate baiting to cause outrage from people who will disagree.  Even the paper's repeatedly expressed dislike of Twitter as a medium can be seen as a giant trolling exercise: who will take objection to this and post the links?  We, the gullible, of course.

Despite all the warnings and this knowledge, we still do it though.  It's like a car crash: we don't want to see people mangled in a wreck on the other side of the carriageway, yet who just drives past and doesn't slow down to sneak a look?  Heavens, I've just written an entire post devoted to the paper I loathe: what it deserves is everyone to ignore it, not to comment upon it.  The problem is that when people tweet about a story, even without linking to it, curiosity so frequently gets the better of you.  If we object to the Mail exploiting us and don't wish to boost its advertising revenue, we really will have to smarten up a bit and hold our tongues on Twitter.  You *really* don't have to search for and click on the two stories I mention here: I promise I have not misrepresented them and everything you need to know is here.

In summary, this by @WelshDalaiLama presents matters beautifully (and "read" encompasses clicking on their links):