GUARDIAN - Twitter at its worst is not Bercow, but the braying mob

**bb1** Sun May 26, 2013 10:21 am

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/26/twitter-sally-bercow-poor-judgment

Twitter at its worst is not Bercow, but the braying mob

The Twitter villains are the bullies who feel scant responsibility and a lack of interest in fairness

It seems that Sally Bercow, found guilty of libelling Lord McAlpine, is a Twitter martyr in some quarters. I keep hearing about what a blow this is for free speech. However, Bercow hasn't suffered a miscarriage of justice; on the contrary, she's guilty. (Her attempts to settle with McAlpine before the case went to court were a clue.) Or is it acceptable for someone to imply that a person is a paedophile so long as they're a bit cheeky about it and include a hashtag? Is this what passes for free speech these days? As for tweeters, typing "sad face" because they now have to watch what they say – at which point did they arrogantly presume that they were immune to the laws governing the rest of society?

Isn't this Twitter all over – an interesting communication tool that, for too many, swiftly turned into a licence to browbeat, bully or bore? People fight for the right to free speech, sometimes they die for it. How anyone could have the gall to equate this with someone tapping out sarky remarks of 140 characters or less is beyond me. But then Twitter is beyond me. I've tweeted once, and that was only because someone asked me to retweet a charity thing. Occasionally I receive messages saying people are "following" me, and I think: "Please don't bother. I never tweet. I'll only end up feeling guilty and responsible for you." The whole thing is akin to being tricked into taking on one of those toy cyberpets that start crapping everywhere when you don't look after them properly. One day I might even get around to deactivating my inert Twitter account, to the dismay of no one, including myself.

Of course Twitter isn't all bad. It's been amusing observing certain celebrities using it to "talk directly to fans"/sidestep the media, inadvertently revealing how dreary and stupid they are, and how PR-protected they've been. There are also very witty tweeters, or times when tweeting has helped pass on interesting or important information that normally wouldn't get airtime – these are the people and situations that justify the medium.

It's good that people can forward links to each other without having to wait submissively for media permission. Sometimes there's a subversive element to Twitter, a sense of underground community; an anti-establishment frisson that gladdens the soul.

Is this you? Or are you the kind of pitiful low-end tweeter I'd imagine I'd be – the sort who'd end up tweeting that the person sitting next to you on the bus smelled of Frazzles? In which case, what's the point of immortalising such inglorious bons mots? While some people are gifted tweeters, the rest of us need to be aware that the minutiae of existence is essentially tedious. What's astonishing is that there are so many people out there who don't feel this self-preserving impulse to "hide the dull". On the contrary, Twitter is a culture almost wholly composed of bargain basement narcissists braying pointlessly into a vacuum. "I like this! I don't like that! Look at my dinner!" If people ranted like this in the street, you'd have to put a net over them and wait for the doctor.

Then there's the ersatz sense of intimacy that Twitter creates, which makes me want to weep for the people who feel they need it. (Why don't they make some human friends?) However, these sad sacks aren't the true Twitter villains. That mantle belongs to the born bullies – people for whom Twitter represents little more than a series of vigilante posses, complete with pitchforks, flaming torches and a startling lack of interest in proof or fairness. People who feel scant personal responsibility about participating in what often amounts to cyber re-enactments of Witchfinder General.

Isn't this what happened with Lord McAlpine? I'd wager the vast majority of those who tweeted about the allegations had barely heard of him, never mind genuinely suspected him of anything, before they piled in, spreading the muck. It was Bercow's bad luck (and poor judgment) to become the high-profile figurehead for such serial opportunistic witch burners.

Indeed, I'd give Bercow enough credit to realise that this wasn't about free speech, this was about a tweeter running their mouth off without thinking and, for once, paying the price, which is quite different.

If this is what's offending Twitter's sense of free speech, then perhaps a wake-up call was long overdue.