Yesterday, my daughter asked a pertinent question about where we are heading at the time of writing. It was: “Do they have uncensored internet in Taiwan?” I wasn’t sure, but assumed that the Chinese Communist Party, with its looming invasion plans foreshadowed by its insistence on calling the country Chinese Tapei at the Olympics, would make that a no, and that, like the rest of China, internet access in Taiwan would be confined to state-controlled platforms.
The idea, however, of limited internet did not depress me. The other day I tweeted this: “Things that people say that, as I’ve grown older, I’ve realised are not true. No. 1: You’re never too old.”
A long time ago, I stopped looking at reactions to things I post on social media, but I found myself idling through the nonsense underneath this one, and one person saying in response: “You’ve become a Facebook post generator for normies. Stir some s*** ffs….”
I say it’s a person, but that’s unlikely. I think the poster is obviously a troll farm worker. Interestingly, it betrays, I think, some actual human irritation. Because what Twitter (I won’t call it X) and the trolls who live there thrive on is s***-stirring: endless provocation, leading to endless provocation back. And for a long time I did play that game. This was partly because, in my mind, trolls were hecklers, insults shouted at me from the dark, and my job as a comedian is not to ignore hecklers but to make fun of them.
Which I did do, for years, and built a stand-up show around it, Trolls: Not The Dolls, which you can see on Sky Arts very soon.
Also during these years – its Golden Age (2012-2021 approx) – Twitter did actually have real-life social impact. The big movements of our time – #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter etc – could not have happened without the launchpad of the platform. So it felt, even with the abundance of s***posting always present there, worth doing. Every so often on UK Twitter, #JewsDontCount would trend, and it felt like antisemitism too, was a conversation that was shifting not just onscreen, but in reality.
However, since Elon Musk has taken over the platform and turbocharged the algorithm, most of the raging fights ongoing on Twitter are, as it were, only really going on Twitter. The shouting and fighting seems like a closed system, a looping circus, with only very occasional relevance to the non-digital world. Nothing of substance is achieved by going into battle on there now, except amplifying the very bad conversations within the sealed very bad conversation bottle.
Which means I still post, but generally, as this irritated troll has spotted, innocuous jokes and observations, plus, of course – I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth – plugs for my books and shows. I haven’t gone as far as stepping away completely, but I have now an airy “Oh that thing? Have I not deleted it?” relationship to the account. Or, as someone who I used to post a lot about once said, I am present but not involved.
On which note, the issue I am most drawn back to, is antisemitism. I will of course still sometimes call that out when I see it. But if you want to see proof of the direction an unregulated social media platform tilts towards, just skim Twitter – briefly, please – for anti-Jewish hatred at present. It’s extraordinary. I saw lots and lots of it in the past, but now it’s completely off the charts. The Overton Window for online antisemitism hasn’t been stretched or shifted, so much as – completely, Kristallnacht-y – smashed.
Which makes challenging it self-defeating, as doing so is a clarion call to the army of Jewphobic flies buzzing around waiting to pounce. Even though I admire the many Jews who are still on there fighting the good fight, most of the time, now, it seems less like fighting and more like fanning. The flames, not Dakota, that is.
You don’t necessarily need to say anything about Jews to see this. Other reactions to my innocuous tweet about ageing include “Jews actually do count, considering the aid and arming the Jewish-led genocide and its supporters receive by Britain’s government and opposition parties together” and “I don’t understand how @Baddiel can claim Jews Don’t Count when the moment someone speaks out against Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of people, they’re called ‘antisemitic’ by Zionists. It’s almost as if he’s realised that this is a great way of making money.”
It’s almost as if is a social media meme, and I’d say it’s almost as if these two tweets are by the same person. Indeed, it’s almost if that person is also the troll, annoyed that I’m not responding to these antisemitic provocations, and thus adding to the noise, in a way that I could have been relied upon to do so a few years ago.
So this is why I would’ve been fine to have had limited internet access in Taiwan. But apparently, not only is the internet totally uncensored there, it’s also got the fastest broadband in the world.
Which means I’m really going to be shooting fast and loose from the hip those Facebook-generated posts for normies.
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.