It's everyone else who is making a big deal out of him leaving Twitter, which (again) kind of proves his original point. Stephen Fry leaves Twitter. Well, so fucking what.

Which is not to say that there's no outrage here. But it tends to be a better sort of outrage, expressed by providing context and explaining what's wrong and what ought to be done.

The author seems to be suggesting that because everyone thinks their behavior is universal and objective, one cannot justifiably make this claim, and that every objective thrust must necessarily have emotional underpinnings. Maybe; but Fry never tries to invalidate others' feelings. Those offended tend to.

> The subtext here is that cretinism is acceptable, but being a target is not. If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door. What kind of reasoning is that, and what kind of society does anyone think it’s going to create?

It's almost a call for more putting the blame in the right place, given that Twitter's sheer volume can take a grumble from an off-color joke at a party and multiply it by a thousand fold into something much harder to bear.

Whether the solution is technical or social, it seems like a real problem to me. We haven't had the ability to unify with similar voices in large numbers so quickly before. It should be unsurprising that when we do so for the first time we're a bit indiscriminate and heavy-handed with the power.

EDIT: I live in France and I have never observed that kind of behaviour in the Latin world or Eastern Europe for example. Most of the time when someone would say something "offensive" that doesn't directly impact the people in the room, the reaction goes along the lines of "Well, that's your opinion, whatever" or some form of polite debate.

Anyhow, it's a shame that it looks like only half the comments here are from people who read the article instead of just jumping to conclusions.

I don't suggest people who find themselves offended quit the Internet. But I do suggest that they, and everyone else, quit Twitter. You'll find you're much happier for it.

I've been noticing this a lot lately, even on HN. Someone will mention equality or fairness and there will be a whole slew of people complaining about how people are too sensitive now-a-days. In reality, those complainers are being overly sensitive themselves.

> If you’re a total dick who only uses the Internet to seek out strangers and ruin their day for kicks, you are absolutely welcome. If you happen to be one such sought-out person, there’s the door.

Sums it up perfectly.

> Now, you’re the only Python developer at a Haskell conference. You go to a talk, and one slide makes a joke at Python’s expense. The entire room laughs. Suddenly you feel much smaller, maybe embarrassed, maybe annoyed. It was still only one person making one joke, but that person clearly had more influence here

I'm not sure what the author is trying to accomplish here. Maybe they thought they were "pandering to the audience." But I found this metaphor to be inappropriate, poorly formed, and implicitly draws a comparison between 1st world technical choices and actual harassment.

While we can respect other people's feelings, at some point we have to draw a line and say, "This is something where you may be able to brush it off, since it's basically an arbitrary choice you made that you could unmake at any time." As opposed to the deeply-rooted and often immutable nature of subjects that are axis of discrimination elsewhere, such as someone's race or personal gender identity.

Either this author has so little respect for their audience that they think this metaphor will actually speak to the average and intended reader (in which case, wow... you genuinely think I'm stupid), or they genuinely believe that these sorts of things are in a similar category.

Either way, I get a really bad feeling from it.

"It’s fine that no one cares about whatever dorky thing you’re into, but wow why would you make fun of the sacred and hallowed Super Bowl, which is so important to so many people, how could you be so inconsiderate"

and the strawman couldn't be more blatant absent some flame emoji.

Now, she didn't reference the tweets which provided the supposed context, but everyone's probably heard the "Ha ha, sportsball!" jokes from people who don't enjoy athletics. The problem isn't that people are making jokes about the popularity of sports, it's that the joke really isn't funny. Instead, it perpetuates the behavior the author claims to oppose — rather than be pleasant with one another and take at least a conversational interest in what someone's saying...let's be inconsiderate and vitriolic about one another's hobbies! This is wrong whether said hobby is football or League cosplay.

"I don’t think too many people are wanting for someone who’ll listen to them talk about football."

The strawman continues with vague references to undefined populations that strip people of their individuality. They're all rude sports bros, while we're enlightened board gamers.

"Yet I haven’t seen any comics and snarky jokes suggesting that sports fans listen to their friends rave about Warhammer.

Must not have been paying too much attention. Here ya go, guy is a pretty popular standup who notoriously loves nerds, hates sports, and has a show discussing internet culture with three comedians every weeknight(!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hardwick

At this point, you may be asking. Wait — this started about Stephen Fry and Twitter...why are we now talking about nerds vs sports? I'd ask the same thing of the author. The section is poorly though-out and explains nothing about power dynamics; Was hatred of one another's interest the most appropriate horse to hitch the "serious discussion of Twitter mobs" wagon to?

OP of TFA says, "I love Stephen Fry, really I do".

I am someone who loathes Stephen Fry, with his pseudo-intellectual wittering, his incorrect presumption of understanding of technical matters, and his flippant arrogance. He has been described as "a stupid person's idea of a clever person", something I wouldn't disagree with.

Watching him stupidly misinform viewers of Qi about how GPS works is one thing. Reading him butcher the history of Dr Gary Kildall is another. I'd argue the latter could reasonably be said to be "offensive" to most of the HN crowd.

With that said, I don't think Fry's wrong on this.

Twitter (and Tumblr) have become a hive for the professionally and vicariously offended. From the de-verifying of Milo Yiannopoulos, to this case which resulted in Fry sulking off Twitter yet again, Twitter especially seems to have it institutionally ingrained.

The bag lady remark was not unreasonable, nor mean-spirited. Nor was it taken as such by the lady in question.

If you don't like Twitter, you can log the heck off. One is not forced to use Twitter, certainly not with one's own real-world identity. If you don't like it, you can say so, take a bow, and take your 120 characters elsewhere. As Fry has done.

Twitter and Facebook are not the bastions of Free Speech they might claim to be, but they do host proponents of both sides of most debates. If you say something unpopular or something divisive, rightly or wrongly, you risk taking flack.

But a boatload of people calling you a dick on Twitter is not the equivalent of people throwing bricks through your window. Some people just need to get a perspective.

Free speech is a double-edged sword. It is, however, required for freedom, liberty, democracy, real equality and progress. Part of that is accepting people are going to say stuff that you personally don't like.

A lot of people will disagree with my views on Fry. He is effectively a British institution at this point. And that's fine. They can happily complain bitterly about my characterization of him, although the number people would actually care about what I say is probably rather small. That's all fine. That's free speech. And I'm sure we all agree free speech is preferable to the alternative.

"Criticism of bad behavior is good and necessary, but it far too easily spirals into a howling typhoon of nonstop vitriol and hate that's difficult for the target to deal with, especially if they're not rich/powerful."

Still I'd recommend reading, it's not as long as it looks.

Tell 'em you don't like X, block 'em, and boom, you're done. No need to make 15btweets explaining just how much you hate [Scapegoat off the week here].

Democracy is dead, once shared common culture is destroyed the polis turns into a rampaging destructive mob.

So the people pushing this, not the foot soldiers but the people at the top, whats their angle, their logical next step? My guess is authoritarianism, mass censorship, a return to some kind of monarchy. Or maybe they just like watching the world burn. Or they think 1984/BNW/AF are instruction manuals not dystopias. I suppose for the ruling classes, those books ARE utopias. We seem very comfortable with those folks being the only people with money; perhaps its time for us to give them all our civil rights too.

Divide and conqueror... people pay too much attention to the former and forget the purpose of all the drama is the latter.

a common method that works in politics as well. leaders don't need to ask for those who support them to cross the line because they know there will be those who will and they derive benefit from their actions all the while decrying them.

social media is just the back room games of mover and shakers out in the open. the same rules but just more visible

I'm not convinced Twitter is fixable as-is. The most obvious technical solution is to do what Reddit did and make sub-Twitters, but they're not going to do that. But as one big global broadcast platform, it too easily exceeds the ability of the human mind to deal with things when you get even modestly popular, to say nothing of being a celebrity trying to directly participate.

But in reality there's simply no way to be a member of a "community" of that size. Arguably that's one of the places where this essay sort of stalls out... there's no community here to be discussing in the first place. Just a really, really big pile of people, with affiliations too loose to even remotely be a community. If there is "power" here, it's not at all clear to me who has it, and it certainly seems on the evidence that Stephen Fry is actually on the short end of that stick rather than the long one. To the extent that the essay seems to vaguely try to suggest that he did the wrong thing, itself ironic in light of, well, itself, I don't think the case was made.