Twitter – voluntary spam?

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Joe

In a recent article, it’s been suggested that Twitter is becoming a major route for spammers to peddle their wares. This seems to be a feature emerging of all social networks right now, but in today’s piece I want to focus on Twitter. The view expressed in this article is pretty strong – probably an even more extreme position than I take with regard to spam on Twitter, but it’s worth looking at twitter from the perspective of whether we are participating in a network that is becoming more spam than good quality ham?

As is suggested in the article above, the relationship we have with the people we follow is rather different to the relationship we have with people who email us spam – on the whole the folks who send us wonderful offers of Viagra and millions of dollars on the Beserabian national lottery are unknown to us (and probably to any other human being on the planet). With Twitter, we’ve actually accepted the folks we follow as followers, and when one of those followers does transgress our own definition of ‘spam’ and send us a message we regard as inappropriate, as well as it being annoying there’s also a sense of betrayal of trust to a greater or lesser degree.

When we interact with people on twitter, there are two relationships involved; people follow us, and we may follow then. We only see their content if we choose to follow them. This is why I’m extremely careful in who i do follow. But even then, if someone who normally posts sensible stuff posts a couple of sales messages over a few days I’m not going to break my heart about it – I get more upset by people who ‘flood’ twitter with lots of posts one after each other or who repeat posts at frequent intervals. Such content is much more intrusive, in my opinion. They tend to be the ones who’re more likely to get put off my list of followed people than someone who sends me the odd sales message.

The other interaction is who follows us; until we also follow them, we don’t see any content that these people put up, but I’m equally protective of who I allow to follow me, based on the real world aphorism of being judged by the company that you keep. This is why I regularly screen people following me and block folks who’re obviously doing little else than selling, obvious ‘iffy’ accounts, etc. It’s important to do this as far as I’m concerned because I don’t want any of my other followers following someone based purely on the idea of ‘If they’re following Joe they must be OK!’ Just a quick look at the profile and Tweets of some some folks immediately indicates to me that they’re

The ‘silent spam’ we tolerate by allowing folks to follow us who’re ‘bad’ but whose posts we don’t notice is just as bad as the noisy spam that we’re aware of on a day to day basis. In my view I regard this sort of spam as the true voluntary spam, and as members of the Twitter community we should all be blocking and where appropriate reporting these folks, even if we are not following them ourselves.

Is this a valid test of Social Media Newsgathering?

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Joe

A few days ago I came across this news story, in which a group of French journalists are to be holed up in a farmhouse somewhere with no access to normal news media but with access to Social Media – Twitter, Facebook, etc. The idea is to see whether news can be effectively and accurately reported via Social media.

It’s an interesting idea, but, just like Celebrity Big Brother, one has to ask Is there a point?’ To start with, as has been pointed out by some commentators, by announcing it in this way it’s quite possible that people will try and game the system and attempt to get some totally ludicrous story in to the news programme that these reporters will be creating in their isolated time. And there’s the lack of ability to follow up alternate sources who aren’t on Twitter, no way of getting a gut feel from the rest of the media, etc. In the last week there was a particularly persistent rumour on Twitter that Johnny Depp had died, which indicated the ‘life of it’s own’ aspect that many rumours have, only this time it was spread incredibly quickly and virally across Twitter, hence reaching, in the words of the beer adverts, parts other rumours in the past could not reach. I have a gut feel that the items that interest the vast majority of people on Social Networks are unlikely to be the content of conventional ‘serious news’ outlets. More National Enquirer than National Interest, more Geek than GATT. I can see some areas of overlap – the major big stories like Haiti, for example.

On the other hand, if by chance the news reported by these reporters reflects to a greater or lesser degree the output of the conventional media, then it has an awful lot to say about the efficacy of the ‘citizen journalist’ in pumping out on to social media outlets news that is editorially similar to that which is reported by the mainstream.

A further possibility is that ‘hard’ news stories that don’t get conventionally reported but that do appear on social networks and web sites such as Indymedia might be picked up and run with. To me, this is the most interesting outcome of all, and if the reporters and their parent stations play the game with a straight bat it could give us all an intriguing insight in to the editorial policies of conventional media and how this form of newsgathering of crowdsourced stories might start showing more sides of conventional news stories than typically gets reported.

One thing that does concern me about this sort of approach, apart from validation and verification, is analysis. Everything is a scoop; the fast nature of Social Media means that the time taken to interpret and analyse what’s happening is time in which any number of other stories will zoom by. This is a pattern we’ve already seen in 24 hour rolling news; everything is reported quickly; the facts (or rumours) are reported with no sense of context. It’s like trying to get a picture of the strategic and political importance of a military engagement from a soldier who spent the whole battle in a foxhole pinned down by enemy fire. It’s a valid viewpoint in one way, but is not a method of reporting that produces truly informed citizens.

Facebook friends limited to 150 by the brain?

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Joe

As anyone who’s ever heard me rant about the ‘numbers game’ side of networking – especially on sites such as Ecademy, Linked in or Facebook – will testify, I’m a great believer in quality rather than quantity, and until the software on such sites can do more for me than it currently does in terms of augmenting my memory and the cognitive abilities I apply when trying to remember ‘Is Fred interested in Mousterian Variability or is that Jill?’ then I use these sites to more conveniently keep in touch with roughly the same number of people I would via non computer based means.

So I was pleased today to read this item, suggesting that the brain has a top limit on how many people we can keep track of. It’s called Dunbar’s Number and is suggested by anthropologist Robin Dunbar to be about 150. It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s been realised for years that there are optimum sizes for small teams of between 6 and 10 people, which fits with the old military idea of the ‘Brotherhood of the table’ – the ideal size of a small, self contained, fighting unit being a section of about a dozen men. In such small teams personal loyalties develop and the team bonds quickly. Larger groupings are employed in companies, but few large companies now look to any ‘business unit’ as having more than a couple of hundred people in them, as management becomes impersonal and the whole unit becomes less effective.

I’ve held for many years, even before the advent of Internet social networking sites, that the quantity over quality brand of personal networking is more to do with train spotting, stamp-collecting or the MI5 Registry than it is to do with maintaining close and friendly business or social relationships. The numbers approach reduces everything to the level of transactions -‘What can ‘x’ do for me today?’, or ‘I need to know ‘z’, who can help me?’ Whilst this is indeed part of social relationships, the more is beautiful version of social networking makes it all there is to having a network, which is painfully sad.

The natural extension to this approach is what we’re seeing now; many ‘numbers based’ networking sites end up as platforms for the exchange of low-value ‘opportunities’ between people, which are rarely of value to the recipient. Spam may be too harsh a word, but what else can you call it? If you have a network of 2,000 people, then you’re much more likely to feel OK about ‘cold calling’ them all than you would if you had a more tightly defined network of respected confidantes, friends and valuable professional associates. Same on Twitter – it’s easy to spam 20,000 people with marketing messages in 140 characters because you simply cannot know them all. You’re working as a publisher. there’s nothing wrong with that but don’t fool yourself in to believing that your relationships with those 2,000 or 20,000 people are anything other than, in most cases, opportunities for you to push your message to them.

Of course, true relationships do develop from these large numbers of what I call ‘transactional friends’, but they enter in to the 150. The vast majority of these thousands of friends and followers seem, therefore, to be just stamps in a collector’s album.

I for one don’t want to be a collector!

The dumbing down of Twitter starts here?

Posted on January 21, 2010 by Joe

I’ll admit it. Deep within me is a snob. As far as I’m concerned, the online world started heading down hill when you no longer had to know how to install a full TCP/IP stack to use the Internet. Most online discussion forums should, in my opinion, have an intelligence test before you’re allowed to post on them – basically the ability, for an English language website, to string together English sentences without text speech or foul language is a good starting point. OK…where was I….oh yes.

Seesmic, the company who produce the popular Twhirl Twitter application, are producing an application that they basically believe will bring Twitter to the masses of online users who are yet to Tweet. The software has been endorsed by Twitter and developed in collaboration with Microsoft, who may be planning on installing it as part of Windows. The program, called ‘Look’, is designed to be used by people who’re not currently tweeting and who may not feel that they have much to say – looking at it I’d say that it appears that twitter are starting to commoditise their platform – increase the numbers of users and volumes of traffic prior to some efforts towards monetisation of their network. In yestreday’s piece about BlippyI mentioned the ‘database of intentions’; perhaps Twitter are looking towards a massive increase in numbers of users to swell the flow of data that can be used to generate another part of this database. Twitter’s traffic / user levels have also been flat for a while – perhaps twitter see this move as a means of breaking through the current plateau and getting things moving again before the next new thing comes along.

Now, as you can gather from the title I have a few issues with what’s happening. To some people, the idea of ‘dumbing down’ Twitter may sound daft – after all, many folks think it’s pretty dumb already – so let me explain what I mean. Twitter is a platform that carries messages which users can filter and hence determine what they see. In principle, therefore, a large influx of new people shouldn’t necessarily change the culture too much; after all, people filter which Tweets they see. If Twitter does become a hotbed of text speech and obscenity (OK, even more than now! 🙂 ) then it shouldn’t affect most of us because we can filter out the noise. This is a different proposition to spam email or discussion Forums where the signal to noise ration – i.e. the amount of good stuff compared to the dross – does decline radically when larger numbers of users come on board.

However…all this new traffic will be using Twitter’s infrastructure, and unless the twitter infrastructure is improved I can see many more occurrences of the ‘Fail Whale’ in the months after the introduction of this new package.

As for the dumbing down; I am concerned; if Twitter are going in this direction to play the ‘numbers game’ then I can see good content becoming harder and harder to find. Twitter’s search facilities are pretty poor; using them to search through large amounts of juvenilia for the valuable nuggets of content is not going to be easy.

Social Media Bubble….here we come!

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Joe

Are we heading for a ‘speculative bubble’ effect in the portions of the media and IT economy that are tied up with Social Media and Social networking? Regular readers will know that I’m something of a cynic about the importance of Social Media and Social Networking; whilst it’s clearly an important aspect of marketing for the future, I am rather concerned about the importance that the ‘industry’, if we can call it that, applies to itself.

Take the following article, from a Canadian newspaper, for example. Real world businesses are still doubting the importance and relevance of Social networking and Media to their ongoing business activity. Unsurprisingly, the practitioners are effectively saying ‘Ignore us and you’re doomed, doomed I tell you! Doomed!’ Now, some of us who were out of school in the late 1990s can probably remember the comments made by a number of folks with possible vested interests that anyone without a web presence would be out of business within 5 years. What actually happened was that within 5 years a lot of web companies were out of business, and many businesses with no web presence or strategy whatsoever were going along quite happily.

Just because you find something sexy and interesting doesn’t mean it’s important; passion is a wonderful thing to have but one also needs to be pragmatic along with it. In a recession, surely any business is likely to be most interested in keeping existing customers and is likely to be playing a ‘safe hand’ with it’s resources. It’s unlikely to want to adopt techniques that it’s customers may not actually be aware of or care about. There is absolutely no point in extensively using social media and social networking technologies if your customers are not aware of them! It’s rather like advertising in French when you have no one in France reading the ads!

The arrogance of Social Media zealots in assuming that real businesses are lagging behind is astonishing; surely Social Media / Networking is a support function for most companies, part of marketing and advertising. It’s not as disruptive a technology as the web itself is, and shouldn’t be treated like it is. Take a look at this definition of a bubble – the phrases that immediately struck me were “emerging social norms”, “positive feedback mechanisms”,”they create excess demand and production”. I think it’s fair to say that we’re seeing all these effects.

In addition, it’s difficult to value the Social networking / Media market place and individual services and companies within it. And then we have the other issues often associated with bubbles:

Moral Hazard– how much of the market place is supported by ‘other people’s money’ – if supported mainly by VC capital then companies may take risks that they wouldn’t take with their own money.

Herding– the more folks who say it’s good, the more the markets are likely to follow.

All in all….I think a ‘correction’ to the emergent Social Networking and Media sector is likely. And then we can get back to realistic use of this technology as part of an integrated marketing strategy for businesses.

When Twitter gets like TV – lots of repeats!

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Joe

As some of you may know, I’m a newbie at Twitter. indeed, my first efforts were not impressive, I stopped, then re-joined with better results. My saga and comments are briefly recorded in these two blogposts, here and here. I’m now getting in to an almost regular Tweeting habit, though I’m still a consumer rather than producer of Tweets, and perhaps it’s my own way of using Twitter that gave rise to this post.

The other day I was browsing my Tweets (I use Twhirl most of the time, btw – not bad at all, though I’m also looking at Tweetdeck) and I saw a Tweet that made me do a double take, as I was convinced that I’d seen the same Tweet, even down to the wording used, sometime previously that day. It was a link to an article somewhere, and I remembered it because I’d read the linked article. I did what I always do in these circumstances, assume that either Twitter or Twhirl had had some sort of brainstorm. But no – the timestamp on the Tweet was a few minutes old, and other new tweets were coming in thick and fast.

And then it struck me – the same tweets were being sent a couple of hours apart by the same user – sort of like the rolling news on Sky or CNN. Sky promise all the news in 15 minutes, every 15 minutes, and some people are obviously doing something similar on Twitter.

Now don’t get me wrong – there is a time and a place (and a frequency) for repeat Tweets. I’ve seen it used most effectively when advertising events, seeking urgent help, etc. After all, the very ephemeral nature of Twitter means that on a moderately active Tweetstream a post will soon ‘fall off’ the bottom, so to say, and unless the user is monitoring reasonably actively the content will be missed. But what works for ‘time critical’ stuff like up and coming events, urgent requests for help, etc. doesn’t really work for uplifting quotes, re-tweets of news items, etc. It strikes me as being a bit like the approach taken by children when they want to get adult attention of repeating their request for sweets, biscuits, new toy, whatever every few minutes until the relevant adult either gives in or gives them a thick ear.

And so it is that I’m seriously thinking of giving a few folks I follow the Twitter equivalent of a ‘thick ear’ by stopping following them. I honestly don’t see the point of Twitter content such as aphorisms being repeated every couple of hours. To take the TV analogy further, as well as being like rolling news it’s also like the ‘+1’ channels that transmit the same content as another channel, just 1 hour behind.

In many ways, Twitter is like radio or TV broadcasting; unlike most digital content it is ephemeral and dynamic, and moves along a timeline – just like broadcast radio and television. Maybe we ‘content providers’ for this new media need to bear this in mind and lay off the un-necessary repeats.

The Social Media Numbers Game

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Joe

I’m old enough to have used an address book and still have a Rolodex on the phone table. When I actually sit down and think about the people with whom I have reasonably regular ‘quality’ contact in a 3 month period, either electronically or face to face, it probably amounts to no more than a hundred or so. I guess it’s safe to say that in the world of networking I’m a ‘quality over quantity’ sort of fellow. I’ve never been a great collector of large numbers of business cards or people details – collections are fine for stamps, coins and locomotive numbers but are kind of creepy for people. 🙂

Back in the late 1990s / early 2000s I used a networking site called Ecademy – I stopped after a while because it seemed that people were making contact with you purely from a sales oriented viewpoint. Allow me to explain – if I’m interested in AI, and someone brings something to my attention that’s even vaguely related to the field – that’s cracking! That’s exactly what I’m there for – and hopefully I’ll be able to reciprocate. On the other hand, if someone steams in with a ‘Hi, I’m Fred, I’m in marketing, blah, blah, blah’ I get the feeling I’m receiving a boilerplate message which is likely to end up as a boiler room selling attempt. The site seemed to encourage numbers of contacts over quality – and that’s one of the reasons why I eventually jacked it in.

I’ve noticed in recent days that I’m being followed by people who are following thousands of others. And the odd thing is most of them appear to be selling something that is as relevant to me as a comb to Sir Patrick Stewart. The ‘Bio’ of one such follower (soon to be ex-follower in my daily purge) – “A Business Dedicated to providing free online MLM training videos, articles, books and webinars”. If I received an email like this I’d call it spam – pure and simple. I know that Twitter has policies around spam, but my point is that most folks following 20,000 people seem to be in the MLM, ‘sales and marketing’, ‘social media consultancy’ sort of areas. They’re cold calling – they sure ain’t networking.

Bottom line – there is NO WAY, realistically, that the content generated by the 20,000 people these bods follow is ever registering in any meaningful manner with these people – I assume it’s simply being harvested electronically and searched for keywords that might suggest a sales lead.

Joe’s categorisation of Twitter users…

Vast number of followers, smallish number of followed – publisher / celeb.
Vast number of followers, vast number of followed – probably sales / mass marketing
Smallish followers, large number of followed – probably spammer
Smallish followers / smallish followed – personal / business networking

OK – it’s not a brilliant classification but it works for me. Just watch out if you’re in category 2 or 3 ‘cos I’m binning you!

Whilst I was drafting this yesterday, I came across this piece on the same topic: http://juliorvarela.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/when-twitter-numbers-are-meaningless/

Don’t get too hung up on your numbers on Twitter. If you’re following lots of people, just check WHY. Do they add value to your day? Amuse / entertain you? Educate you? Guide or enlighten you? If not, ditch ’em. And those following you – just take a look at their numbers and think about what I’ve said.

And I hope you don’t chuck me off your lists. 🙂

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas? Not necessarily…

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Joe

Long before it was the title of a movie, it was a fairly well known saying.

In the UK it was more likely to be ‘What happens in Blackpool, stays in Blackpool’, or, as time passed, what happened in Estonia stays in Estonia. I was a mark of secrecy that was usually associated with the ceremonials of secret societies; it didn’t matter that you’d abseiled down Blackpool Tower naked except for a sock on your head, carrying a crate of beer and singing ‘Unchained Melody’ at 3am. If you found your boss in flagrante delicto with Myrtle from accounts, playing strip-poker, well, that’s something you were not going to be allowed to use in blackmail. Because of the simple, unwritten law of the hard playing world of the works outing / stag weekend / hen weekend / mate’s trip to Skegness.

‘What happens here, stays here’.

It used to be up there with the other rules of social nicety. Basically, if you did get up to alcohol fuelled high jinks on one of these events, you were OK. It wouldn’t get home or back to the office (unless you contracted some social disease, got pregnant or turned up in the local Magistrate’s Court or A&E). You might have shown yourself to your friends and colleagues as a hypocritical, deceitful, lecherous alcoholic but you were given the ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card of the event falling under the rule of ‘What happens here, stays here.’

Just to be serious for a moment, there are even ‘legitimate’ versions of the rule – self-development weekends, religious retreats, etc. What happens there, stays there, unless you want to share your OWN experiences – but no one else’s.

It’s an incredibly sensible rule for the latter type of event, and to be honest I reckon it can be a reasonably sensible code of behaviour to abide by for participants in the other events mentioned above.

And it’s a way of life and social behaviour that is slipping away. Whenever you go out these days there will inevitably be someone taking photographs which within 30 seconds show up on Facebook. I’m one of those people who hate having a photo taken – apart from looking 20 pounds heavier than I am, I always get photographed with a stupid expression on my face or doing something daft. That sort of thing showing up online is OK to deal with – it’s the other stuff that gives the running commentary of what happened, who spoke to who, who sat next to whom – even for a few minutes, etc. The minutiae of a social event that to be honest is of fuck-all relevance to anyone who wasn’t there. Those who are there, know what happened. Those who weren’t there, rarely need to know what happened except out of vicarious curiosity (OK…nosiness!)

I don’t necessarily want to be photographed when I’m slightly drunk at a non-work related, social event when I take a quick trip and spill drinks. What would once have been a momentary source of amusement for all who witnessed it that you probably wouldn’t even have remembered the following day now becomes a cast in stone moment on Facebook. If you’re REALLY unlucky and surrounded by geeks, it will also be Tweeted – which isn’t as bad as the Tweetstream is pretty ephemeral – but you get the idea.

Please people – just go back to taking and posting a nice big group photo at the beginning, share any candid snapshots between you and people who were there directly rather than through your 200 friend Facebook page, and let what happened in the pub, stay in the pub, in 2010.

I was a twit not to Tweet!

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Joe

Many moons ago I posted a piece on here – ‘Am I a twit not to twitter’. Well, I’ll admit it. Yes, I was a twit not to Tweet, and I’m happy to say that. I can’t argue with objective facts, so here’s my brief thoughts on what converted me. Just in case anyone wishes to follow me, I’m on twitter, funnily enough, asJoePritchard. Serious lack of imagination there but no excuse for missing me!

So, here are my hints and observations from a beginning Twit! There are plenty of articles around with more detailed hints and tips of how to use Twitter, and I’m not going to re-hash what’s said elsewhere. These observations are my personal thoughts and insights, for what they’re worth, as to how I found that Twitter could be useful.

Two Way Street

I think the first thing that I learned about twitter (or rather had it pointed out to me) was that it’s a two way street; if you want people to follow you you need to follow people, and that you need to have an idea of what you want to gain from Twitter.

Identify what you want

Apart from keeping up with your friends and colleagues, I’ve found Twitter invaluable for getting a good newsfeed from sites of interest. In fact, I’ve found it a better proposition than RSS feeds.

Use a Twitter Client

When I first tried Twitter out, I used the Twitter web interface to use the Twitter service. It didn’t work well for me – so this time I decided to try out a couple of dedicated Twitter applications. I have Twhirl and Tweetdeck installed and they’ve both made using Twitter on a regular basic much easier – I just leave them running quietly in the background, they dynamically update, and they make it a pleasure to Tweet.

Think of it as less intrusive MSN

I’ve actually used Twitter as a form of MSN with some people – it’s more spread out in time than a typical MSN conversation, more compact than Email and certainly doesn’t clutter my inbox with lots of short mails.

Use it for promotion

I’ve recently re-activated this Blog and integrated it with both Twitter and Facebook, and have been studying the referral logs to see where blog referrals are coming from. There does appear to be a fair amount of traffic from Twitter. A recent event I participated in – ActionForInvolvement’s Climatewalk – made significant use of Twitter in the run up to the event to promote it and encourage re-tweeting about the event. Again, I gather that the results were well worthwhile!

If you need to, run multiple accounts

I was considering tweeting on behalf of my business from within my ‘personal’ Twitter account but I’ve decided to set up a separate account for the business. The reason? People following my business may not be very interested at all in everything else I do. Let’s call it ‘brand protection’ – I want my business brand and my ‘JoePritchard’ brand to be different entities online. Whilst folks who know me will know that I run ’em both, the separation will be useful for business connections who I really don’t want in my personal life – and vice versa!

Be picky in following and blocking

Spam has certainly increased on Twitter. When someone follows me, I’ve got Twitter configured to mail me. I always go and check out their profile, and then determine first of all whether to block or not. Folks who look like spammers always get reported; if someone seems to be mainly pedalling MLM or just looks ‘dodgy’ in terms of their content or places linked to – again, block ’em. I can’t understand why American High School kids of either sex can think that I can be interested in reports of their weekends drinking or shopping and don’t bother completing any parts of their profile – sorry guys, you get blocked. I know this sounds arrogant of me, but I want followers who know me or who are interested in what I say or consider that I somehow add value for them. If you are a US High School kid who IS interested in what I say, then let me know – but have something of interest to me on your profile, somewhere! In return, when I follow, I want to be following people that I know, am interested in or who add value to my online life by introducing me to new stuff or ideas. Twitter does seem to encourage the ‘numbers game’ in people. I prefer quality.

And that’s that – I’m going to start using Twitter Lists shortly and will let you know how I get on. And then there’s the API stuff….watch this space.

Luvviedom rules – time for a dose of reality for some?

Posted on November 1, 2009 by Joe

I rarely post twice in succession on the same item. But hey, it’s a very wet November 1st, it’s Sunday, we’re still in recession and I’ve let my tea go cold. Oh, and the issue concerned is one of those things that annoys me at so many levels – including making me wonder “Why am I so bloody annoyed?”

It’s Mr Fry again. After the rattle throwing episode I mentioned here last night, it appears from this article on the BBC that the rattle was, in fact, on a length of elastic and has come back to Mr Fry’s hands. “Huzzah! Call off the state mourning! Tell the luvvies to stop weeping! Let Guardian readers rejoice! He’s not leaving Twitter! ”

Now, let me state immediately that I am a big fan of Stephen Fry’s portrayal of the immortal Jeeves – the box-set of Jeeves and Wooster is currently spread out in front of the TV – and his magnificent General Melchett. However, on Twitter, he’s a writer. Writer’s get critiqued – it’s part of the job. It’s inevitable that occasionally you will produce a stinker of an article (I know I have) or even a boring Tweet or Facebook status. Again, I know I do….. It comes with the territory and to be honest if you don’t balls up occasionally and mis-read your public I wholeheartedly believe that you’re not pushing the envelope hard enough.

We now have Alan Davies wading in:

“Alan Davies, who stars with Fry in the television quiz QI, also waded in, calling the criticism of him “moronic”.”

Hello? Earth calling Alan? Why is criticism of Stephen Fry ‘moronic’? He’s human like the rest of us and will occasionally be boring to someone. If not, it isn’t personal enough. Some of my friends may well be very interested in the fact that I baked bread a few days ago. Others won’t give a toss. And that’s what life is like, Alan. You can’t please everyone, all of the time. (Oh Lord…I like Alan Davies as well….sorrrrry….)

The original poster of the ‘boring’ comment has apparently been on the receiving end of abuse from a baying mob of Twitter users. This is the dark side of Twitter – dare to make an unpopular comment and the local-yokels will be turning up on your electronic doorstep with burning brands, pitchforks and nooses looking for an online lynching.

I’ll give Stephen Fry his due – he commented as follows:

He wrote: “Arrived in LA feeling very foolish. Wasn’t the fault of the fellow who called me “boring”, BTW. A mood thing. Sunshine will help. So sorry.

“Feeling terrible for that poor guy. He had every right to call me boring. Not his fault it caught me at a vulnerable time. Pls be nice to him.”

He also apologised to the critic.

All now appears to be well in the world of the Luvvies. But maybe Fry and a few other celebrity Twits, Bloggers and Facebookers need to get a dose of reality from this story. If you put yourself up in this way you will get criticism. It’s inevitable. But these critics are your fans and people who bother about you. They keep you gainfully employed and support your lifestyle. And that lifestyle is a privilege that your fans give you – when you’re in LA or wherever, whinging about a perfectly legitimate item of criticism, or here in the UK calling someone who dared to criticise someone ‘moronic’ – do remember that those fans of yours who don’t have your ability and lifestyle actually pay your wages.

Be grateful to them. If you engage in conversations with them through Social media, play the game and be mature enough to take the occasional bit of crap.

In other words, grow up, stop whining, and appreciate your privileged position.

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