Causing Offence

Seen this meme?

Those good old days were when if you voiced your opinion, be it good, heinous or indifferent, it was to a limited audience down at the pub, where you were in all likelihood surrounded by your mates. There was a chance you would offend someone, but it was relatively small due to it being limited to people like you. Social media has vastly expanded your audience and exponentially increased your chances of causing offence.

Perhaps social media is responsible for polarising opinion so much, precisely due to expanded audiences. Even combatting bonkers draws attention to bonkers, thus spreading it to those among your acquaintances who have a predilection for believing bonkers. 

That said, the news media is just as bad. Nothing sells newspapers better than a disaster story or opinion masked as news. Factual reporting is a thing of the past, but even when just facts are reported, the ability for people to comment on-line admits unfounded and ill-informed opinion, lacking any evidence whatsoever, that just sours the debate and ends up as a slanging match between opposing factions.

Time was when outrageous and patently false statements were put through the sanity filter of the press and rarely saw the light of day, but that was in the days when the press had a code of ethics and no hidden agenda. It was also before 'balanced reporting', which gives bonkers the same legitimacy as fact. 

Social media has acted as an amplifier and the more outrageous the statement, the wider the audience, as nothing gains traction better than something outrageous, as that hideous woman, Katie Hopkins, has proven. She makes her living from being controversial and obnoxious, but in very cynical and contrived manner.

The ill-informed latch on to these statements and what were the idiotic ravings of the London taxi driver, the lunatic pronouncements of the grumpy old blokes down Dog and Duck or the delusions of the crowd at the local Wetherpoons, infects Glasgow and Birmingham taxi drivers, the grumpy old men at pubs up and down the country and the breakfast beer morons in every Wetherpoons in every town. It becomes an infection - a veritable pandemic of idiocy spread by social media.

In the world of politics, the failure to admit to mistakes is all pervasive and I find that particularly offensive; disasters are spun as wonderful victories, in the face of all evidence to the contrary - it insults the intelligence of the electorate. This, more than anything, is causing a loss of confidence in politicians across the spectrum, but the lack of humility seems more concentrated on the far right and far left. Within democracies, it's the far right that is the arch proponent of mind-blowing spin that beggars all belief, except for the belief of the bonkers tendency.

I watched Boris' party political broadcast last night, which was full of empty promises. After having contracted Covid he promised to lose weight - if anything, he's gotten a bit more rotund and certainly hasn't made good on his promise. There again, he's not exactly renowned for delivering on promises.

Have you noticed that his thatch has grown more unruly in the last couple of months? The epithet Worzel Gummidge used to be levelled at Corbyn; it's now more apt for Boris.