The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Philip Keightley

We're all very positive about social media here at Punch and for good reason. It's our bread and butter. It plays a major role in the majority of our client PR campaigns and, well, you know the rest, it's great and all that. However, this week on Twitter, there have been a couple of things that have stood out, one that presents Twitter users in a very favourable light and one that does not so. Firstly, the rather ugly legal cases drawn from Twitter: a Tory MP that "joked" about an Independent journalist needing to be stoned to death and the prosecution of a financial manager for "joking" about setting off a bomb at Robin Hood airport. I'm going to leave alone the Tory MP issue for the moment but clearly, joking or not, his tweet was an act of gross stupidity. Not that any "reasonable" person could reasonably consider it was anything but a joke, but given that he is (was!) an MP and given the tinder box nature of the post, you just don't go there. The prosecution of the tweeter for his comments regarding Robin Hood airport however is quite ridiculous. Whilst the public nature of Twitter meant that anybody could see his tweet, this was essentially a joke tweet as part of an ongoing conversation with one of his followers. It was clear to anybody with an iota of grey matter that this was a joke. However, he was still prosecuted. The reaction on Twitter has been quite inspiring (well, let's not go as far as inspiring – it's been, interesting). Twitterers have united behind the hashtag iamspartacus and re-tweeted the original tweet to see what happens, in protest against the ruling. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

That was the good part for Twitter. The bad is coming. And it's very bad. Very bad indeed in my book. Yesterday was, as I am sure you are all aware, the 11th day of the 11th month, and at 11am the nation traditionally observes a two minute silence out of respect for the fallen during the Great War. Twitter was subsequent awash with people tweeting that there would be a two-minute silence marked by the abstinence of tweets. Is that wrong, I hear you ask? Yes, it is. It's very wrong. You really shouldn't need to say "let's all hold off tweeting for two minutes". Twitter can be so smug sometimes – so self satisfied, so bourgeois. Just pause your ridiculous obsession with tweeting for 2 minutes without announcing the fact you are doing it and being so self satisfied. Oh well done, you managed not to tweet for two minutes – what an amazing sacrifice. I mean, really.

Anyway, little rant over. Wouldn't be the same without a little rant. And that's me done for the week. Oh, the "Ugly", I hear you ask. Well, just to clarify that the person that broken the self-satisfied twitter silence was "Lord" Sugar with a promotional tweet about one of his products. Nice one Al. I'll rant about how despicable The Apprentice is next week. Or tonight in the pub. As usual.

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