Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Twatmobs And Tattle Tales

Hello. Remember me? I used to blog here.

The black dog, he been sniffing around, see. He don' make me wanna do much, no sir. 

I find I've been really quite subdued; almost oppressed in my ability to produce anything other than an incomprehensible whining noise when asked a question that isn't 'cup of tea, Jase?'

Even this - this is forced. Forced because I'm really rather ashamed of myself and my inability to achieve - but also because I know it's part of a gyroscopic process. The process of creating fuels the desire to create. It's true. 

Even my time on Twitter's suffered because of it. If I'm not in the mood to communicate with anyone, then I'm just not. Real life or online, it's all the same to me. And that galls me too, because there are a lot of lovely weird odd sexy interesting people on 'The Twitter' that I generally (and genuinely) like interacting with. 

Of course, it's not all snakes and no ladders. I've had my 40th birthday present early, from my wonderful daughter and her lovely mother (If you want to stay great friends with a partner who you clearly can't live with, I thoroughly recommend splitting up - just saying). After years of feeling like I've had a limb removed, I have a bass guitar again. You know that bit in Thor when he gets his hammer back and shit starts getting real? Yeah, that's right. Still fucking got it.

Enough preamble. It's the 2012 Olympics. The biggest and most expensive misdirection operation the UK has ever embarked upon. The country's most vulnerable and needy are being pissed all over from the great heights of Westminster. The old and infirm are being brutalised, and our free speech is now non-existent. Which leads me to the reason I'm writing this blog.

Today, a 17 year old kid was arrested because he said something a bit out of order on The Twitter. It was aimed at one of our Olympic 'stars', thereby generating a wave of hatred from thousands of people, and some subjective attention from our fine news media. The phrase 'Twatmob' has been used in the past to describe the massed outrage against an individual on forums such as Twitter, and it strikes me as a perfect descriptive word for it. A Twatmob. A mob, comprised of twats. Yeah. Perfect.

I read his timeline. Went from cocky posturing to confusion, to fear, attempted apology, fear again, anger, outrage, fear and back to anger as he tried to process what his smart-assed comment had caused. 

Had it happened at poolside, there might have been an altercation; perhaps even a scuffle. Claire Balding might have been accidentally punched in the face. It would have made the news, certainly, but the Twatmob would not have been invoked. 

There are lots of wonderful things about The Twitter. But to think it might inadvertently be the final nail in the coffin of truly free speech isn't doing much for my desire to engage with it on any serious level anymore. Of course, I jettisoned Facebook ages ago. And it's the change in the collective psyche that Facebook is largely responsible for that has created this situation. 

The technology changes, and it creates new shapes for our consciousness to fill. But It's a more fascistic, hysterical, overreactive version of the hive mind. It's the kind of collective that will report dissent, that will obey the party rule without question because the alternative is to allow chaos to rule. Just black or white. No 50 shades of fucking grey here, kids.

You're one of us, or you're not. If you're not, prepare to be outcast.

JH


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