With great relief, Stephen Fry leaves Twitter

I used to use Twi**ter only to post links to pieces that appeared on this site, but then I expanded a bit, posting articles I found interesting but had no time to write about. (My model for this was Steve Pinker, a most judicious Tweeter.) And, very rarely, I’ve tw**ted to someone, but only once or twice (one P. Cunk comes to mind).

But one thing I’ll never do is engage in Twi**er battles with other people. While it makes for good drama on the websites of those who thrive on that sort of stuff, you really can’t have a substantive discussion in 140 characters. All too often people resort to name-calling. Rarely have I seen constructive interchanges. (Tweets do, however, give us a view into the mindsets of those who have no filter between their reptilian brain and their fingers, like one well known plagiarizer.)

Stephen Fry has finally seen the light. In a post on his website this morning, “Too many people have peed in the pool,” he’s announced that he’s taking a Twi**er hiatus—probably permanently. And good on him! He pulls no punches:

It’s no big deal – as it shouldn’t be. But yes, for anyone interested I have indeed deactivated my twitter account. I’ve ‘left’ twitter before, of course: many people have time off from it whether they are in the public eye or not. Think of it as not much more than leaving a room. I like to believe I haven’t slammed the door, much less stalked off in a huff throwing my toys out of the pram as I go or however one should phrase it. It’s quite simple really: the room had started to smell. Really quite bad.

Although it’s the ideological battles that have soured him, even atheists have peed in his pool!

To leave that metaphor, let us grieve at what twitter has become. A stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous who love to second-guess, to leap to conclusions and be offended – worse, to be offended on behalf of others they do not even know. It’s as nasty and unwholesome a characteristic as can be imagined. It doesn’t matter whether they think they’re defending women, men, transgender people, Muslims, humanists … the ghastliness is absolutely the same. It makes sensible people want to take an absolutely opposite point of view. I’ve heard people shriek their secularism in such a way as to make me want instantly to become an evangelical Christian.

I find it absolutely impossible not to like Stephen Fry: he’s funny, multitalented, larger than life, honest about his depression and his sexuality, and just plain loveable. Yet I hear from others that he’s been the repeated target of Twi**er hatred, and I simply can’t understand why. If someone like him is the target of opprobrium, nobody is safe. Of course those who court or enjoy controversy get the pushback that comes along with that kind of stuff, but I wasn’t under the impression that Fry was, for instance, like W*rl*m*n.  He takes his leave graciously:

But Stephen, these foul people are a minority! Indeed they are. But I would contend that just one turd in a reservoir is enough to persuade one not to drink from it. 99.9% of the water may be excrement free, but that doesn’t help. With Twitter, for me at least, the tipping point has been reached and the pollution of the service is now just too much.

But you’ve let the trolls and nasties win! If everyone did what you did, Stephen, the slab-faced dictators of tone and humour would have the place to tthemselves. Well, yes and they’re welcome to it. Perhaps then they’ll have nothing to smell but their own smell.

So I don’t feel anything today other than massive relief, like a boulder rolling off my chest. I am free, free at last.

Do readers here use Tw**er? If so, do you use it to get information, enjoy drama, or to simply communicate with others in a non-rancorous way? My own view, which is mine, is that if you have a website on which to write at length, there’s simply no need for Twi**er to communicate anything other than articles that you wish others to see. And Fry does have his own website.