Social media encourages the village idiots

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/02/2016 (3559 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I must declare a bias when it comes to the world-renowned British author and entertainer Stephen Fry. He recently gave me a glowing endorsement for my forthcoming book and treated me with such support and generosity that I will be forever grateful to him. But there was more to it than this. He wrote to me four times — often long, thoughtful letters. From a man so busy and popular, that indicates a remarkable kindness.

Beyond this is his work for so many noble causes, his invincible common sense, his humour, intelligence and — something of which many of us have had direct or vicarious experience — his championing of mental-health issues. All of this singles him out as someone profoundly special.

But on Sunday evening he exposed himself to the world of trolls and twits, the vulgar and venomous, those who measure themselves by how self-righteous and angry they feel. I am offended therefore I am.

He was hosting the BAFTAs, in effect the British version of the Oscars and soaked in glamour and celebrity. He’s done this since 2001 and is extremely good at it, otherwise they wouldn’t keep inviting him back.

His role is to amuse as well as introduce so he makes witticisms. This time one of them was about his good friend Jenny Beavan, who won an award for best costume design.

She was dressed in, shall we say, an unorthodox manner, prompting Fry to say, “Only one of the great cinematic costume designers would come to an awards ceremony dressed as a bag lady.”

Stephen Fry says Best Costume winner Jenny Beavan has turned up looking like "a bag lady" – ouch #BAFTA #bafta2016 pic.twitter.com/IbWT1oeUI7

— Marie Claire (@marieclaireuk) February 14, 2016

Most of the audience laughed, with perhaps a few half-hearted boos mingled in. But the gates of social media hell had been opened wide.

Almost immediately Fry’s Twitter page was bursting with ugly and offensive attacks, accusing him of being hateful, cruel and hypocritical. Ultra-leftists allowed their puritanism to run wild, ultra-conservatives who despise Fry’s sexuality and atheism added fuel to the fire around the new heretic, and assorted dullards joined the hysteria.

There’s context here. Fry has almost 12.3 million Twitter followers, which makes him one of the most followed serious public figures in the world. He has, for example, almost four million more followers than the Pope.

So when Stephen Fry’s Twitter page is under attack, it is news. He very quickly posted a photograph of himself with Jenny Beavan taken after the show and explained that the joke had been between friends and one that Beavan not only did not mind but rather appreciated.

It did little good. The attacks multiplied, on Fry and on his young husband, and eventually he had had enough and tweeted his understandable frustration. That, of course, only encouraged the mob, which now smelled blood. By the end of the night, Fry had decided to delete the entire page. More than 12 million followers, a site so influential it had more than once directed enough traffic to crash websites, gone because of the modern equivalent of salivating villagers with pitchforks and a deranged cause.

Fry wrote the next morning that he felt an enormous relief and that Twitter, which had once been pure and fun, had become “a stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous who love to second-guess, to leap to conclusions and be offended.”

An alliance of ordinary fans and famous comedians came to Fry’s support and we can only hope that he changes his mind — his voice is such an important one — but the decision is entirely understandable. Social media tend now to bring out not the best but the worst in human nature, giving those who once sent scrawled, misspelled letters a public and sometimes influential platform. Growling tweets give these people meaning and provide them with an identity they otherwise do not have.

It’s not confined to social media, of course, but it’s where we see the most egregious examples. People pretend to care, pretend to be outraged, pretend to empathize with ostensible victims when in fact they simply ooze hatred for anyone they perceive as being vulnerable.

The final word must go to Stephen Fry. The day following the BAFTAs in Britain he presented a vitally important television program entitled The Not So Secret Life of the Manic Depressive. I’m sure the Twitter warriors will have nothing to say.

Michael Coren is an author and broadcaster.

mcoren@sympatico.ca