Brendan O’Neill complains about the power of the twitterati (or twats, perhaps). I have mixed feelings about this. The mobbing effect when someone says something that the twats dislike is symptomatic of mob rule and witch hunting on a grand scale, so from that point of view, I can sympathise with O’Neill’s reactions and I have an underlying distaste for boycotts and loud protests generally. However, there is another side to the story. Government has become used to top down authoritarian diktat. The reaction against its workfare programme demonstrated that the proles have a voice and they are going to use it.
In some respects, this was what we did with the NO2ID campaign a few years earlier. Twitter wasn’t around when the egregious David Blunkett took it upon himself to nationalise our identities. However, the Internet gave us the power to communicate and organise effectively in a manner that was previously unavailable to us. In that case, the ongoing, drip, drip, drip of negative commentary built up a groundswell of opinion against the idea.
The twitter flashmob gets things done a lot more quickly. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of this particular campaign, what it demonstrates is that government cannot just impose its polices and expect meek compliance. Not least because this campaign was not, as the Telegraph and the Conservative Party would like us to believe, a few agitators. It resonated with a much wider opinion base. That’s why Tesco et al pulled out. Unlike O’Neill, I see this as a good thing. The proles telling politicians where to get off – that’s democracy, that is. Clearly they don’t like it up ’em…
I completely agree, I just wish that this sort of response could be engendered by all the important issues, you know the economy, removal of our rights, special treatment for politically favoured sections of the population, immigration, the diveristy mess, etc. ad infinitum.
I’m not holding my breath though. This generation seems still to be more interested in which idiot is on ‘Big Brother Get Me Out Of The Ice-rink’ or whatever the rubbish is called this week. The social workers and teachers have done their jobs too well, we have an uneducated and ineducable population in the whole – welcome to the beginning of ‘the crazy years’.
“I completely agree, I just wish that this sort of response could be engendered by all the important issues…”
Oh, this! A thousand times, this!
I’m not sure this is any victory as it stands, frankly.
I share your scepticism. Mind you, while this may be only a flash in the pan, I’m enjoying their discomfort.
Brebdan O’Neill is an isdiot
He’s a JOURNALIST …
Complaining about a form of journalism (twitter) disagreeing with his fascist vies.
Poor delicate little flower.
Oh, and “fascist” isn’t just a “something I disagree with” pejorative.
Think it through.
State-directed labour, working for a favoured big corporation at below the minimum wage – sounds like fascism to me???
Although the fact seems to have been tactically forgotten by media outlets, it was a Twitchhunt that brought down the News of the World by putting preassure on advertisers to withdraw.
Twitter is full of complex issues boiled down to slogans. Fact-checking is sparse and people seem overly inclined to trust people who they follow. Ignorance spreads like wildfire, and there are some fairly narrow groups setting various agendas. People who tweet bad information are often less keen to pass on a correction.. particularly where the bad information suited their ‘agenda’. None of this is ideal… but it is hardly a world apart from (say) the mainstream print media.
On balance, we have a good thing.. but nobody must assume that twitter speaks for the majority. On workfare, for example, more people in my ‘contact circle’ seemed to be reasonably OK with the idea than not – but those who would be inclined to tweet on such matters were rather more biased towards to ‘anti’ camp.
I do want the proles to have a voice.. but not if, actually, the voice is a bunch of Guardianistas, or Daily Mail cheerleaders, claiming to speak for everyone. When something gets 30 million retweets we can call it the voice of the majority… but until then, proceed with caution.
I’m inclined to agree. I dislike the witch hunt mentality that surrounds the twitter mob. However it is nice from time to time to see the politicians get a bloody nose. So, yeah, I’m enjoying it.