Stephen Fry Explains What’s Wrong With Social Media In 2016 And Absolutely Nails It

We wrote earlier about how Stephen Fry deleted his Twitter account following the disappointing reaction from a bunch of Internet pussies over a harmless joke he made at the BAFTAs.

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It’s turned into quite a big debate over the state of Twitter these days and I suppose social media in general. We say it all the time on Sick Chirpse and see it for ourselves on our own Facebook and Twitter pages — some people just aren’t happy unless they’re letting the world know how offended they are.

Stephen Fry has now commented on the issue himself on his website, telling his fans to think of it as “not so much more than leaving a room”.

Here’s how he sees things:

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.

Oh goodness, what fun twitter was in the early days, a secret bathing-pool in a magical glade in an enchanted forest. It was glorious ‘to turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping.’ We frolicked and water-bombed and sometimes, in the moonlight, skinny-dipped. We chattered and laughed and put the world to rights and shared thoughts sacred, silly and profane. But now the pool is stagnant. It is frothy with scum, clogged with weeds and littered with broken glass, sharp rocks and slimy rubbish. If you don’t watch yourself, with every move you’ll end up being gashed, broken, bruised or contused.

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.

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.

He didn’t mention whether he’d be back on Twitter, but did close off by saying “I am free, free at last”.