Of course
Earlier today I was dismayed to see the tweet below appear on my timeline:
If ever there were an example of jumping on a bandwagon, this was probably it. At the time I queried whether the writer had misjudged the mood of the moment, and one hour later this was tweeted from the same account:
Frankly, I am not sure that it is an improvement.
Now, of course Twitter is a place to raise questions, start conversations and contribute to ongoing debate. That person was a free to tweet these things as I was to read them. However, what troubled me was the lack of nuance or tact in the communication. People from many faiths holding up ‘je suis Charlie’ placards in Paris on Sunday might have been surprised to see the words recycled in quite this way.
Last week a so-called ‘terrorism expert on Fox News made the following claim:
In Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in
The resulting storm of #foxnewsfacts tweets responded to this bizarre caricature with humor and wit which made the tweets above look dull and anodyne by comparison. Rather than engaging in any kind of argument, the writers ridiculed through their wit, and thereby demolished the false argument. By the time the broadcaster issued an apology, people were probably so taken up with the #foxnewsfacts that they hardly noticed. I repost a selection below.
Please, let’s be clever in our communications, and let’s choose a tone appropriate to the medium we use.
