In October of this year Elon Musk bought Twitter and promised to do away with life-time suspensions for previously spreading misinformation and inciting hatred in order to ‘promote free speech’. Regular users of the platform have noticed a sudden change in the characters popping up uninvited on their timelines and I am no exception.
It’s as if the awful ghosts of Christmas past, bound in their chains rusted with the acid of hate, have clanked their way onto my carefully curated Twitter timeline. How’s a liberal progressive metropolitan-elitist like me to cope?
Making full use of the twitter tools at our disposal, I’m introducing you to just some of my new squatters and inviting you to join me in my new game: block, mute, or keep!
Kelvin Mackenzie
In the early 1980s Kelvin Mackenzie the editor of the Sun newspaper, was quoted as describing his readers thus:
“He’s the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he’s afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn’t want to hear about that stuff (serious news)” Kelvin Mackenzie.
One could hope that after all these years, Mackenzie has learned that to profiteer from division and tragedy isn’t the higher path, and that he would have better things to do than to publicly twist in agony about public sector pay requests to simply keep up with the cost of living. But he doesn’t appear to have changed.
Having avoided his input into public discourse as if I were from Liverpool, this is the first time in years that I’ve encountered his unhealthy levels of vitriol. Can you imagine being married to that? Nope, neither could they.
Blocked out of principle
Darren Grimes and Sophie Corcoran
Like snotty-nosed troublemakers at the back of a woodwork class, in desperate need of attention and not quite aware of the extent to which they are being played, they are substance-free entities churning out scripted tweets of acid on which the ulcer of British xenophobia seems willing to feed itself. Grimes is so genuine that he used to be a Lib Dem Remainer… is he related to Liz Truss in any way?
Muted, not interesting.
Tom Harwood
On the other end of the class spectrum is Harwood. He ventured out on his own once but got publicly owned by Jessica Simor KC. So he now obediently tweets Tufton Street issued missives attacking everything that made us great – like the NHS, ideological anathema to the Tufton Street libertarian zealots – before scuttling away from having to justify his ludicrous announcements.
I keep him around because the comments are funny.
Elon Musk
Musk himself started popping up regularly with dull little polls and unedifying public spats with Stephen King. He took something interesting and ripped it apart, wanting us all to think it’s part of a master plan. I blocked him but still see him via other tweeters. So now I hear that he lied about many of his academic achievements and has sacked all his cleaning staff telling them they will be replaced by robots. Odd guy.
Blocked, boring.
John Redwood
Redwood joins me for coffee these days. He bemoans the loss of the era in which coal miners powered Britain from underground, working in dangerous conditions and dying of black lung at a disproportionately young age. He’s so desperate for fossil fuels to quash any renewable energy initiatives he seems to have forgotten the role his party played in destroying British mining. Entrenched up to his mineshaft in Tufton Street think tank Net-Zero Watch, he tweets as if his relevance depends on it.
Kept him around for the laughs.
Aaron Banks
Banks is there too. That wide empty face not quite understanding how pathetic he sounds tweeting to defend Brexit at any price, machine-gun litigious to prevent suggestions that he was a pawn in one of the biggest foreign interference operations in British history. Why am I not surprised that he was expelled from every school he went to from the age of 13 upwards, once for selling stolen lead from the roofs of his very own school buildings?
He’s a latter day St Trinian’s cad ‘Flash Harry’ – I personally prefer George Cole – muted.
Lee Anderson
Another member of the politically confused, Lee Anderson went from being a Labour councillor to a Conservative MP. He is a Tommy Robinson supporter with George Soros living rent free in his head. He seriously claimed that he opened his new Twitter account by popular demand… am I cynical in thinking he’s about to ally himself to The Reform Party and wants a platform in advance? Why is he on my timeline?
Muted him too.
Calvin Robinson
Refused for ordination into the Church of England, Robinson sought alternative channels to the Lord. Now a fellow at Tufton Street’s Policy Exchange, he was finally accepted as a pastor by the socially conservative Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (founded Jerusalem 2008). He preaches the loving word of Christ via GB News by endorsing Enoch Powell and is repulsed by immigrants. It’s obviously what Jesus would have done. He is anti extra-marital sex. Robinson is 37 and I cannot find evidence of a marriage. That’s fine.
Muted.
Nile Gardiner
Eurosceptic devotee of Margaret Thatcher, the American Tea Party movement and director of the right-wing libertarian Heritage think tank, Gardiner regularly says hi when I’m least expecting it.
I keep him around. Knowledge is power.
Nigel Farage
No comment – blocked.
Navigating the new Twittersphere
How annoying it is to have to navigate these awful accounts while the ones I choose to follow are appearing less and less on my timeline – surely some strange algorithmic alchemy at work.
Elton John and Stephen Fry, amongst others, have left Twitter. Like many, I sought alternatives and Mastodon is certainly a more peaceful place. But for those of us who like the Blue Bird for all its faults, and sometimes because of them, I recommend the following:
Mute or block undesirable arrivals; turn on notifications for those you want to hear from; and above all, don’t be provoked. It’s what they want.
Keep hate at bay, don’t give up and … Happy Christmas tweeps!
Editor’s note:
Like Elton John and Stephen Fry, you can also find the Bylines Network on Mastodon:
- @BylinesNetwork@bylines.social
- @BylinesCymru@bylines.social
- @BylinesScotland@bylines.social
- @CentralBylines@bylines.social
- @BylinesEast@bylines.social
- @KentBylines@bylines.social
- @NEBylines@bylines.social
- @NWBylines@bylines.social
- @SussexBylines@bylines.social
- @WEBylines@bylines.social
- @YorksBylines@bylines.social
