Stephen Fry and the Tweet Too Far
STEPHEN FRY has said he is going to quit Twitter after a fellow user of the popular internet site described him as “boring”.
The television presenter has been one of Britain’s biggest champions of the social networking site. Last month he used it to announce the end of his television series Kingdom. He also used Twitter to spearhead a campaign against a newspaper columnist who had described the death of Stephen Gately, the gay pop star, as “sleazy”, describing the article as “loathsome”.
Yesterday Fry said he was ready to silence his fingers and thumbs and stop providing his 925,000 followers with near-hourly updates on his thoughts and activities, known as “tweets”.
At 2.18pm he posted: “Think I may have to give up on Twitter. Too much aggression and unkindness around. Pity. Well, it’s been fun.”
Fry has battled with depression in the past and his comments sparked concern among fans and fellow celebrities, who instantly started a Save Stephen campaign on the site. His decision to quit came shortly after getting into a war of words with another user.
BrumPlum, a 47-year-old blogger called Richard from Birmingham, had posted a tweet that said: “I understand Stephen Fry’s tweets but, much as I admire and adore the chap, they are a bit . . . boring . . . (sorry Stephen).”
Fry responded: “BrumPlum you’ve convinced me. I’m obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone.”
BrumPlum later apologised to the television star but said that Fry had overreacted to his comments. BrumPlum’s feed has now been bombarded by comments from angry Fry fans.
After a flurry of messages from other members of the “Twitterati” calling for him to stay on the site, Fry appeared to backtrack slightly and posted: “Well maybe I’ll see how I feel in a few days. Very low and depressed at the moment and any drop of meanness makes it so much worse. Sorry.”
The presenter of the quiz show QI hit the headlines recently when he used his Twitter account to rail against an article by the Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir on the death of Gately.
His tweets were credited with prompting the record 21,000 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission over the opinion piece, which he described as “a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with”.
However, some of his other tweets might justly be described as falling into the “boring” category. Last week he was moaning about the backlog of e-mails on his mobile phone and the fact that his PC’s printer would not work. Another tweet said simply “Hurrah for curry”.
Baffling. Why doesn’t Stephen Fry just grow up a bit? If you’re on twitter to massage your ego by interacting with thousands of lick-arse fans, don’t throw all your toys out of the pram when someone says something unkind. Stephen Fry, like most celebrities on Twitter, enjoys the neverending compliments and adulation from members of the public. His ego seems to have inflated to such an extent that a relatively mild criticism excites a petulant and adolescent display. Fry’s obsessive fans are citing his bipolar disorder as the reason for his sulk; in reality it was simply a lack of common sense. He could have easily chosen to ignore the remark; instead his reply resulted in the stirring of an angry, dimwitted mob. If Fry is that easily offended then perhaps he should not be on Twitter in the first place. The dramatic threat to leave the Twitter realm appears to be little more than fishing for compliments; Fry is acting like a child threatening to take away his affection from a scolding mother. As for Stephen’s star pupil Alan Davies, he clearly has anger management issues.
When you scratch below the facade of fame, you see that these respected ‘legitimate’ celebrities can be just as petty and narcissistic as some of their Z-list brethren. They are similar in the way they crave attention and adoration. They can do no wrong; nobody has the right to criticise, even when it may be warranted. If someone does criticise, then they must be jealous, bitter, or simply hateful. It’s especially worrying for a supposedly intelligent man like Fry not to be more responsible in how he acts; his legion of doe-eyed sentinels can be brought to action very easily. The mob mentality is a strong, pyschological, call to arms. But why do these people have to be directed where to point their outrage? Do they not have a shred of autonomy? The Jan Moir debacle is an example. A brief search of the Daily Mail website returns plenty of homophobic pieces, like this. No outcries in the Twittersphere registered for that, or any of the other regular right wing garbage the Mail spews.
Take Graham Linehan’s pathetic and condescending piece a while back, in response to a journalist who pointed out some of her opinions on social media.
Like a lot of Web 2.0, Twitter is as good as the people on it, and uninformed pieces like Jackie’s continue to fool otherwise bright people into thinking that it’s some sort of “I’m having a sandwich” announcement service. Certainly, there are people on Twitter who might use it this way…and more power to them if it makes them happy…
Linehan provides here a perfect example of the banality he mentioned in his article. A celebrity is having problems with his Xbox. How interesting. There are legions of people who seem to find the mundane tweets of famous people fascinating, simply because they are famous. Linehan does not respond well to criticism of Twitter, and deduces that anyone not interested in that overhyped, irritating hub of pointlessness must be either a Luddite or an idiot.
Newspaper editors! A small request?
Ahem…
Please stop allowing your writers, who have no little to no idea of what they speak, to submit pieces on Twitter and social media. It’s embarrassing. You’re allowing them to embarrass themselves. Jackie Ashley’s piece in the Guardian last week was a classic example of the condition. She writes maybe a thousand words on Twitter and makes it painfully clear that she simply does not know what it is.
Like many people, Jackie Ashley knows how to make her PC do the one thing it needs to do to enable her to make a living. But beyond, in her case, firing up Microsoft Word, she’s at a loss. I would imagine that when Jackie “surfs the net” , she has to wait patiently for each page to load because she doesn’t know about tabbed browsing yet. I would also guess that she doesn’t know how to edit a wiki…or set up a simple website…or write and save her work online…and that’s fine! I have a few blind spots myself! For instance, I don’t know how to use Photoshop at even the most basic level. So in the same way you would not let me write about Photoshop, I would ask that you not let Jackie write about Twitter .
Frankly after reading his bullish response I have to conclude that Linehan is a bit of a wanker. Heaven forbid someone should have opinions that do not slot into Linehan’s shiny world of Internet gimmickry. I think he embarrassed himself, with his baseless presumptions about how technologically skilled the journalist is.
What a privilege it is to be able to peep into Graham Linehan and Stephen Fry’s exciting lives. They are certainly two people I’ve lost a lot of respect for. Yes Graham, you’re having a global conversation. And you’re all talking bollocks.
Compare Fry’s histrionics to Edward Norton’s behaviour. He is on Twitter also, for a very good cause. From reading Norton’s profile, you can see him for the intelligent, gracious man he is, using Twitter and his celebrity status to benefit others. He is not interested in how many people want to be his friend. An example of the usefulness of Twitter.
Here are a few examples of the idiotic sheep venting their spleen:
This moron is defending Stephen Fry and calling someone a faggot at the same time. Some people really do have shit for brains.
He’s not really better than him, you tosser. He’s just a person. Take your head out of his arse, he doesn’t care about you or your dull obsession with him.
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