Twitter and me

I am new to Twitter. As a relative technophobe it's been a hard adjustment but a fun one. Keeping up with trends and friends and my idols has been enjoyable, but the level of idiocy is breathtaking. Occassionally brilliant, often awful, Twitter is currently under attack by certain sections of the government and the press, here I share a few of my initial impressions.

When I entered the world of Twitter, one of the trends I first came across was #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend, to which I could only proffer that you had do something between tweeting and masturbating furiously to violent pornography. When I examined some of their profiles, I realised most had probably never had any real contact with a woman. But I was shocked because there were so many women tweeting to condone, not condemn it.

There are, of course, people who claim it’s all a big joke but with the internet there is no context, no intonation, no immediate distinction between a tasteless joke and a serious opinion. There is essentially very little to go on if you don’t know the person. Any comment can be read by any psycho or idiot who takes it as gospel or an excuse. There are currently two young men in prison for four years for attempting to incite a riot that never happened, that is the same ‘standard’ sentence many get for rape with a weapon. A sense of perspective may be in order, but in the climate it was an implausibly stupid thing to do.

Paul Chambers went to prison for a ‘joke’ that was quite clear. Chambers was not inciting people to blow up the airport, nor was it any sort of serious threat. However, it’s about context and in the post-9/11 paranoia still gripping our security forces you can’t even breathe the word ‘bomb’. I wonder whether it would have been the same if domestic violence and racism, rather than terrorism, were the government’s priority. It is understandable that the comment was taken out of context but Nick Griffin posts nothing but vile, idiotic racism and he has got away with it even though this accurately reflects his beliefs. Maybe Nick would want to explain why he gets away with the kind of hate Islamic fundamentalist preachers are rightly prosecuted for.

I have worked in call centres and face-to-face with people and I’ve always felt that the further removed people are from direct, face-to-face communication, the worse they behave. Over the phone people were far more threatening than face-to-face and by email you got all kinds of abuse. The detachment breeds an anger and fearlessness. At the call centre I was routinely told I would be hunted down at home. As stupid and hollow as it may have been, particularly as I had their name and address in front of me, for some people it was too much. To be honest after a year I was ready to get out of there.

Anonymity is also key to this detachment. If you think you can hide, and with the internet you probably can, you are much more likely to say and do things you would never have the gumption to say or do to someone’s face. Twitter is great source of comedy and, as we saw with the riots, of spreading information and good will. It feels like a community when you’re following your idols but as with any community there’s always a minority of idiots trying to wreck the place.

I have seen more direct hate and racism in an hour on Twitter than I witnessed living in Morley for a year, with its BNP councillor. And my girlfriend’s British Indian. I reacted with anger at some people when I first went on there but quickly came to realise how futile that is. They are cowards and often don’t respond with anything other than further invective, if they respond at all.

The same applies for the comments sections on newspaper websites. I am currently picking some of the worst for a new feature on the Daily Organ. I have again been tempted to react and again I give up, unable to change the hateful opinions of people who boast that Bernard Manning is their comedy idol. According to a number of Telegraph readers, one of whom was previously banned for “idolising Anders Breivik and was using a new pseudonym, I am a “PC drone who wants everyone to think and act the same” and a “brain dead socialist” who thinks “the USSR only failed because it was not socialist enough.”

I can assure you none of these things are true, I have embraced multiculturalism unlike the readers of the Telegraph. Thinking in different ways creates new, innovative and rounded solutions. I want debate, not to badger and scare people into my way of thinking, unlike the Mail, Telegraph, Express et al and their readers. My feelings on the USSR certainly do not reflect that theory, in fact it’s fair to say that I have never really developed a full opinion on the matter.

So send me your thoughts before Louise Mensch and co. take my twitter feed off line, you can tweet me at @bombdog2147 or leave a comment at the bottom. And if you see any brilliantly stupid comments on news websites please email the Daily Organ’s editor, it’s the only way we’ll win…