Who put the twat in Twatter?

Ten years ago, I had lunch with a techie person who was raving about something called Twitter. It has just been launched and seemed as pointless to me as standing on the edge of a pier, shouting at the waves while wearing a gas mask. I called it Twatter and had a little laugh at my amusing take down of this new fad. She was dismissive of my dismissiveness. “It’s really going to be pretty big,” she opined as I snorted into my decaf latte. She then took out her phone. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I’m Tweeting your scepticism,” she replied and I wondered whether that was a euphemism.

Well that scepticism was pretty deep rooted. It took me another six years to finally join the other Twatters. It was my 50th birthday and I was celebrating it with a 6am train to Leeds for a very dull event. I was bored so donned my gas mask, headed for the nearest metaphorical pier and joined the wave shouters. Pretty quickly I realised that it was the best thing ever invented – well maybe second best after the 13.5% Australian Chardonnay from Lockett Bros in North Berwick, a snip at £12.

For years, I’d had the most stupid thoughts about things in the media, daft photographs in newspapers and other such banal things. Up until the invention of Twatter, these stayed mainly in my head only to emerge when I was a little drunk on that wonderful Oz vino and in good company. I never realised that the rest of world was waiting for me to let them in on the joke.

And so it began. It was harmless fun although to my wife Lucy, it was also totally pointless. When I had 50,000 views of a hilarious tweet during the Eurovision contest or 40,000 views of a pic featuring the Queen and Nicola Sturgeon, she failed to join in my delight. When Camilla Long retweeted my pic of George Osborne wearing a gigantic blue tie on the Andrew Marr show, the only one impressed with me was me. At last I had found my calling. The only down side was my inability to turn this into my day job so real life got in the way of making a real calling out of Twatting.

Twatter also enabled me to hook up with long lost pals, poke fun at world leaders and demonstrate my brilliant ability at photo cropping. Pretty soon I was on Facebook too though I soon realised that as I had no interest in video of cats or dogs, this clearly wasn’t the medium for me.

And Twatter was just 140 characters. 140. You needed to be disciplined in your writing or alternatively have spent most of your time during during English at school looking out of the window. Spelling was optional. Grammar sporadically existent. You could be an egg instead of posting a pic of yourself and best of all, you didn’t need to be you. You could hide behind another name or personality. I didn’t although laterally I have had some fun with my handle and name but I don’t hide that it’s me being a Twat. The trouble is that lots of people now do and they’ve taken Twattery to new, disgusting levels.

I’ve not been trolled much. A guy once had a go when I criticised the referee in the Scotland v Australia World Cup game accusing me of being a chippy Jock. He was spot on so I let it go. Another chap – it’s always a chap – accused me of being a lefty liberal but up until now, no one’s called me a Jeremy Hunt

But then you look at what others put up with, the constant vitriol directed at people who disagree with the views of the poster, the cheap and easy misogyny, the deliberate misunderstanding and Twatter begins to lose much of its charm.

It’s easy to say brush it off, say it’s anonymous nonsense, tell people to take no notice then you read about someone who wished the MP Luciana Berger dead in a hail of anti Semitic bile and find out they’d already been hugely offensive to another well known female – it’s mainly females who get the bile – and then Twitter responds with a bland statement about tightening up controls and it seems less harmless fun any more.

Maybe it’s a symptom of the times. The world where Trump can say anything offensive thing he likes and still potentially be the next US President, where Z-list celeb Katie Hopkins can troll everyone with her ill thought out and stupid rants and be rewarded with a radio show or where Cybernats and Momentumites can attack the MSM and build a false picture of victimhood. Maybe it’s just a symptom of me becoming older, but you sometimes wonder if you understand the world anymore.

I tell myself that I still have a laugh and lots of others do but wonder whether the instant rage, the thoughtless anger and the lack of interest in doing anything from those who own Twitter justifies my enjoyment.

Then I remember – it’s all pointless so a bit like those in Labour refusing to give up their party to Jezza and his crew, I’m going to hang around the Twatosphere being pointless and, more importantly, harmless. I hope you do too. See you on the other side.