Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm constantly astonished that there are people who actually use the Twitter website.

As am I but the Ipad app works quite well and you can see those images on there too.

Another gem of a retweet...

Have a picture of a silly car.

That's better!

Has anyone else had problems with Twitter recently? For some reason I can't log into Echofon or the one I use on Chrome at home (the name escapes me for now)

The v1 API was turned off over the last 12 hours. A lot of old clients will have stopped working.

That'll explain that then. Hmm... Annoying. I was used to that and it seems like they haven't updated Echofon for ages.

Guess I'll have to find something else to use. I can't get through the day without Twitter.

Oh, fucking Hell!

This news to you, then? It's been talked about for ages.

/glares at Twitter

Have you guys seen these?

@anagramatron - retweets 2 tweets that are anagrams of each other.
@pentametron - retweets 2 tweets that rhyme in iambic pentameter.

They are very clever indeed!

ATTENTION FANS OF 80s STUFF.

There is a twitter account that simply tweets TV listings from 30 years ago.

https://twitter.com/tv30yearsago

Pray, continue with your lives as before.

This thread will do.

It appears that Stephen Fry has thrown a wobbly, told all his Twitter followers to fuck off and deleted his account. I don't follow him, so didn't see anything of what went down, but the newses all seem to suggest that it occurred after he made a joke at the Baftas suggesting that the award for best costume (going to the designer credited with designing costumes for the latest Mad Max film) went dressed 'as a bag lady'.

Twitter storm follows, Fry deletes account.

I like Stephen Fry, though his Twitter account does not interest me (or any celebrity accounts, I guess the most famous person I follow is Stuart Ashens), but I only hope with his past mental health issues that it does not sink him into depression, as I can absolutely imagine that it might.

I think the joke was ill-judged, and obviously off the cuff, as he was joking about her immediate appearance. I guess some negative response was inevitable. I don't know the scale of the backlash, so wonder how harsh it all was?

Twitters handling of harassment is generally poor
The 'mob' mentality probably meant that he was overwhelmed with the responses
For someone with his previous issues I think probably a break from twitter when this happens would be a good thing for him.

I do follow him but my twitter tends to run hours behind (so i sit and read a few hours worth at a time which means I catch up on stuff like this normally much later)

Isn't Stephen Fry relatively infamous for throwing strops on Twitter and leaving it for periods of time?

He has done that at least twice in the past that I can remember.

I think he has left to not Tweet for periods of time before, but i don't think he has ever deleted his account before now, but I may be wrong. Walking away is one thing, but to delete the account suggests permanence of action (in his state of mind as of last night anyway: I'm sure the Twitter bods could reinstate it if needed).

I read a related news story: Stephen Fry is apparently a very old and dear friend of the designer in question (Jenny Beavan?) and was joking in warmth. I'm sure that from an audience point of view this could be seen by some and not others.

Twitter can be wonderful but also vile. It's a microcosm for society, basically. I have made some great friends, but I also have to take regular breaks for the sake of my mental health.

I've seen hardly any nastiness on Twitter. I only follow friends and people that share art and knitting type things, though, and learned to block or mute people who might make it something other than that. I think it can very much be anything you want it to be, and you can shape the experience.

My theory is that forcing people to distill their thoughts into such a small character limit brings out the worst in everyone (even more so than internet interaction already does). It makes it much easier to misinterpret stuff that's being said and because any response has to be very short I suspect people just think, "Fuck it, I'll just call this person a cunt and move on; it's not like I've got the room to be particularly nuanced here anyway."

I admit though that I have absolutely nothing to base this on at all aside from my own gut-level suspicion of a platform that forces people to boil stuff down to it's barest essence and I imagine actual Twitter users will be slightly annoyed at my slagging off of it's USP.

Well, unless something you write is retweeted out of your network and thus put in the face of ten thousand people who -- for whatever reason -- can't wait to explain to you why you are wrong/awful/should die, because the abuse will come in faster than you can block the accounts. You lose your ability to shape the experience then.

Source: I've been RTd by Zoe Quinn, so I've had a l'il taste. I've also been RTd by William Gibson, which also made my phone explode, although not for negative reasons at least.

No, I think you have a point (and I'm likely the biggest fan of Twitter on Beex.) The brevity can be wonderful, and I dearly love Weird Twitter, but it provides fertile ground for all manner of confirmation bias, knee-jerk reactions, and misinterpretation (some accidental, some willful.) I think it much less volatile when it was all dick jokes and, a bit later, tech news and hobbies. Discussion of topics that carry any weight is a minefield.

I actually saw the Bafta's, and when it happened Mrs Grim... and I spent quite some time saying "OMFG" at each other.

It was a properly cunty thing to say, just because the lady hadn't spent more than most people do on their car to buy a fucking shiny frock. I don't give a shit if it was his mate or not, he made the comment in front of a few million people that basically said "this woman doesn't look good enough to be one of us".

The fucking twat.

It's this aspect that mostly turns me against Twitter I think. In recent years there's been so much focus put on the platform in general, with individuals and institutions looking to it as a critical source of information and opinion. Which means everything's filtered through whatever accidental and constant impact it's character limit brings and I don't like that idea at all. Getting people to think about things in depth is difficult enough at the best of times and when you bake the inability for long form discussion right into the bones of a platform I worry you're fucked right from the start.

It's still pretty good for dick jokes and fart jokes, though.

I take your point, and I can see what you mean to some degree, but I'm not sure I entirely agree. I had to look up who Zoe Quinn was, and though I am aware of the whole Gamergate issue to the point that I know it happened and, on the periphery, the very lightest understanding of what happened, I don't know of the tweet you made or the reaction to it (ie, was it to do with the whole Gamergate thing (assumed?), who was it in support of, etc...) By saying Twitter can largely be whatever you want it to be, I assume that whatever you became embroiled in was because you entered into the debate on what had became a big Twitter/social media storm. I'm only guessing that you weren't tweeting about Jake's love of Iberian Pork Lard to get retweeted and receive whatever the outcome was?

I suppose if you tweet about or in relation to a specific issue which you know is creating a lot of noise on social media, or to or about the people that have a lot of influence and are drawing a lot of attention on certain matters then you have to be aware that there is a chance that your message will be noticed and put to a wider audience, or found through keyword search, etc. I think some people actively seek that kind of attention, by directly addressing or including via @ or .@ specific prominent accounts. I'm not suggesting that was the case with you, but I have seen it on Twitter. In all that, there are some that like to enter themselves into the thick of the debate, and I think some of the time hope to be embroiled in something. I don't understand it myself, but that's because I don't use Twitter that way.

It may be true that somewhere, some day, Stephen Fry or Donald Trump or whoever retweets me and simply doesn't like the fact that I knit English rather than continental style, and I am on the receiving end of thousands of continental knitters ire, but I think I am less likely to have the same experience as you as I use Twitter for enjoyment only and don't really tweet anything that would be likely to draw significant attention from anyone prominent. I do think that the issues that some people throw themselves into on Twitter are important, such as Gamergate, such as the feminist cause, such as all the ills that plague our society, but that's not why I go on Twitter, so I shape my usage away from that.

There are terrible things that happen around the world every day, and there are plenty of bad news stories to keep the 24 hour news channels in full employment, but I may choose to only watch 15 minutes of TV a day and for that 15 minutes to be nothing but episodes of Sarah and Duck, and my Twitter feed is much the same: fun things, things between friends, pictures of sheep.

Yes, it sounds as if it were in very bad form, whether he really is very close friends with the designer or not, and whether she took it as a joke, unless pre-discussed on a national (international?) platform it was probably at least embarrassing or indeed very upsetting,: even if it is something they'd joke about as friends, it's not the same if someone announces your personal joke about your appearance to entire room, let alone millions of people. As before, I didn't see the comment and didn't see the twitter surge of interest afterwards, but I'd still hope no harm came to Fry, as it wouldn't make it better for anyone, especially if she really is a friend of his.

That sounds a bit victim blame-y; as if it's somehow your own fault people are shrieking at you because you dared to have an opinion about something that was happening in the world.

But Fry isn't the victim here. It's a tricky one.

No, not at all: I don't think it's right that it happens, and I don't like it. I think it's horrible, and that would be one of the reasons that I decide to use Twitter in a different way.

I'm sure some people would say this is a naive way of using twitter, but what I am trying to say is in response to people who say that Twitter is vile... I think it can be very far from vile - it can be a lovely place if you only watch the cartoons

Maybe they are both victims of something?

Jenny Beavan of Fry's thoughtlessness and crass comment on a national platform, and Fry of Twitter bandwaggoning (if that's what happened? Maybe it wasn't - maybe it was just individuals who watched the Baftas all tweeting independently to say it was in awful taste).

Twitter moves too fast for my 20th century brain. Maybe I'm following wrong

I always follow under 100 people to make it manageable, and then with various filters and such it keeps it quite manageable for me. Most days... Russell rolls his eyes when I scroll past hundreds of tweets and read the most recent five if I haven't checked in a while

The thing is I'd have very likely criticised Fry if I had seen the show, so inadvertently I'd have contributed to that. I probably wouldn't have @'d him though.

But having been dogpiled last year (over something that was definitely my fault) I can sympathise. It's not a nice feeling at all, and he's done the right thing to walk away. I did for two months at the time. Self-preservation is important.

Without going into too much detail, as I doubt you'd want to, this 'dogpile' thing (sounds like poo!) I assume is when people gang up and mass tweet at someone: were they all followers of you, or were there a core of people, or a specific person who was drumming up people to tweet @ or about you, to make whatever you had tweeted about a discussion topic to a wider audience, so you were getting negative responses from a wider group of people?

In short: do you think the response you got was measured to what you said and from people who deserved to say it to you? Sorry, that's all very loosely put... I just wonder at what point reaction turns to bullying? If sometimes the comeuppance outweighs the original statement or action and whether there aren't people who simply enjoy joining in on this 'dogpile' because it makes them feel... I don't know... I actually don't know why.

Sort of. It can be deliberate and co-ordinated and done just to provoke or upset, as you are thinking I think, but it can also happen naturally (and probably does so much more often.) If someone as high profile as Fry says something stupid a lot of people are going to respond to it saying very similar things without any intention or awareness of being part of a mob.

To the person on the other end, of course, it looks very similar and the effects are basically the same. But the motivations of the people doing it are different in an important way.

Not my followers, no. And it wasn't proportionate. But the problem is that it isn't orchestrated, just people are individually saying their piece. Which, on its own you can deal with but hundreds of people doing it (or thousands in Fry's case) builds up to a whole mess of fucking horrible shit.

No, I don't think it was co-ordinated (in terms of people organising to mass tweet, or anything like that), I thought it was probably more organic, in that something catches the attention of a number of people, especially if one or more are notable or have a large number of followers, there is some outrage that follows, and it gains force and traction until people who had no part, interest or knowledge of the original incident are tweeting strongly against something that they perhaps don't even have much knowledge of, or (maybe, just maybe) even care about, but perhaps see the opportunity to create some noise/chaos, etc).

In that regards I thought it was perhaps more like a riot: kind of spontaneous, which sometimes drives a core number of people to perhaps come more deliberate to rally up others to grow the movement. Maybe.

Yeah, I can see that. I guess what I don't understand is why, um, let's say someone doesn't like your beard. They can tell you that they don't like your beard, and it offends their beardless sensibilities. Maybe you have a handful of mutual followers. Some might say, yes, his beard makes him look like a hairy penis, others might say actually your beard gives shape to your otherwise bland face, others still will think you are beautiful on the inside, and most won't care about your beard. All that happens between your ten mutual friends. Some might tweet for or against your beard, maybe @you, just so you know how strongly they feel about your facial hair, one way or another...

But I guess it didn't stop there? If it did, that would be a pretty small pile of dogs.

So, what happened? Did someone say 'Hey. look at @myp's stupid beardy face' and then their followers decide that yes, they also hated your beardy face, and so strongly they had to tell others how bad your beard was, until you had hundreds of bald-faces bringing you down? So, whatever you originally said was cast to a wider audience to purposefully give you a telling off from a wider crowd? Or somehow something else? As you say, you felt it out of proportion.

Anyway, I like your beard, so it was a silly example. Anyway, I better make the most of nap time to get STUFF DONE

Yeah that's exactly how it happens.

This made me laugh a lot, thank you.

I'm not on Twitter and never will be either, but from what (admittedly) little I have seen, this "pile on" baying mob syndrome seems rife, as does bullying by proxy and "othering"... it all seems fucking ghastly and if my kids were 13-16 about now, I'd do all I could to keep them away from it.

Shit, even I haven't been immune; I well remember being aghast at venomous, vitriolic comments being banded about me personally, on a public forum (Twitter) that I wasn't even a part of and couldn't reply/defend myself, by people who - for better or worse - I had rubbed along with online for *years*, when it was brought to my attention...? Cowards.

Even as a gnarled old guy as I was, I was pretty upset and angry;there's no way this would've happened on the forum (Beex). I can't imagine what it would be like on a vastly bigger scale, as against people with far more tender sensibilities when only young or whatever. Life's too short for that kind of shit; people can be such wankers (and some of them even have the temerity to wonder why I don't want anything to do with them after this - unbelievable).

Ludicrously old-fashioned I know, but I wouldn't say anything about anyone I wouldn't say to their face (and on a forum they weren't even a part of? Nothing at all). But it's just too easy to press that button, hiding behind a keyboard, isn't it?

The world is full of ugly things that you can't change. But, to pretend it's not that way, isn't my idea of faith. You can blow it off and say "there's good in nearly everyone, just give them all a chance". Try not to think about it.

Well now I want Iberian Pork Lard

So in some scenarios here the abuse hurled at you would be nothing at all to do with knitting but the fact that your female.
There would be calls for you and your family to be injured / murdered / other unspeakable acts
There would be images taken from your feed and twisted / perverted to be things that would make you physically sick

You would not have a way to deal with this other than blocking that person , however when you block that person there are hundreds / thousands more waiting behind and serving up the same comments and content.

I have not had this happen to me but have seen things like this happen to others and pretty much the only answer is to leave.

Unrelated to this but perhaps to give you an idea of the type of thing that can go on :

Anne Wheaton :
http://www.annewheaton.com/the-long-goodbye/

Susie Verrill :
http://standardissuemagazine.com/in-the ... ter-abuse/

Interesting article about some people who were caught and punished for abuse on twitter

http://news.sky.com/story/1200521/twitt ... ive-tweets

Apparently fry and the lady in question are friends. Don't know if that makes it better or not.

There's a whale in the Thames

Given that awards ceremonies the word over are the natural home of snide bitching, mistimed jokes, poor communication, shit jokes, luvvie backslapping, in jokes and self congratulation, and this was the BAFTAs - the fucking BAFTAs, which takes all that, magnifies it to a scale of one hundred and then observes it through Hubble from 3 metres away - I'm not sure why the people involved were watching it and were surprised that something offensive that potentially portrays each and every one of those traits was spoken.

Unless they just didn't expect it of Stephen Fry. Gervais gets away with far, far more every couple of minutes at the Golden Globes.