Slashdot Mirror
'The Room Had Started To Smell. Really Quite Bad': Stephen Fry Exits Twitter (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson writes: For a man so readily associated with words — and certainly for a wordsmith so enamored with technology — Twitter seems like something of a natural home for Stephen Fry. Over the years he has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, but last night he closed his account. Fry's latest exit from Twitter (there have been several over the last few years for numerous reasons) came about because of the backlash he received for making a joke at an award ceremony. Hosting the BATFAs (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) on Sunday, he referred to costume designer and award winner (and, indeed, friend) Jenny Beavan as being 'dressed as a bag lady'. 'Offended' Twitter users attacked Fry in their droves, and he fought a valiant battle, before eventually giving up and terminating his account. It comes just days after Twitter set up a new Trust & Safety Council.
Closing your account stops them from tweeting at you. But they are still out there.
Who is he?
And it's readily apparent that unfiltered access into the aggregate human psyche has proven time and again that despite the oft-cited belief that humans are fundamentally good -- they are really not.
Twitter has always smelled like a drive by after burrito night. It just depends on whether your own stink overpowers others, as you can handle your own.
Silence is a state of mime.
as in "We trust you won't be tweeting any more after we safely ban you for having different political opinions than us."
If Twitter is wondering why their stock is falling and their executives are bailing, here's your wakeup call. Hiring a team of Professional Victims to decide who gets a voice on your platform will not improve your company outlook. Ask Ellen Pao.
The ironic thing here is that it's very unlikely that Twitter's "Trust and Safety Council" would have sided with Stephen Fry. Remember, he insulted a Protected Class of individual, and it's therefore just as likely that he would have been banned for his remarks. He pissed off SJWs and couldn't deal with the fallout, which I can completely understand. SJWs are nasty individuals who will never stop harassing people in their supposed crusade against harassment.
Still, this is just yet another example of what we all know: Twitter is pretty much just a platform for anonymously trolling famous people. Once it finally fails (and it's circling the drain, the Trust and Safety Council is just one example), the world will be a better place.
Join a service that is designed to disseminate superficial, banal, knee-jerk reactions, and this exactly what you should expect to get. Duh!
I've seen a few bag ladies in my time and she does bear a striking resemblance to one of their rank:
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/B71D/production/_88277864_frytweet1.jpg
She was dressed pretty meh for a costume designer.
And I choose to reject your offense and substitute it with my own. Boring. Like watching any number of my friends that I am connected with on facebook go through the cycle of "OMG I LOVE HIM" to vague "WHY CAN'T YOU TRUST ANYONE" to "XYZ is single and just focusing on myself" to "OMG I LOVE HIM IDC WHAT ANYONE SAYS" over and over. It is really perpetuating the kindergarten/elementary communication style that I would hope most people would grow out of, but all the social media outlets allow a person too easy an outlet for. Things they probably wouldn't say directly to one of their friends because they'd immediately realize how juvenile it is, they will say 1000 times a day on facebook or twitter etc... Then you see celebrities acting the same way and that validates your little safe zone triggered feelings and eventually you may even start actually saying those stupid things out in public...at which time you'll find out just how much no one cares. Anyway, slashdot comments is just another social media platform and here I am blasting out my disdain for something I'm essentially doing right now.
Are we caring about that?
(Why is this appearing on Slashdot?)
You don't explain yourself to the tumblrina and twatters in a situation like this. You let them get their panties in a twist, and then you up the stake with a more outrageous joke.
Remember, don't argue with idiots. They will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
If he let twitter yank his account, would have added to his status. This way though, he let them win and wussed out.
Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Brought to you by DNA (National Dyslexics Association).
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's what happened to Slashdot. SJWs show up, shit all over everything and the interesting people leave.
I so hope you're being sarcastic. If not, please burn your computer in fire and never plague the internet again.
You know, I was against a [sarcasm] tag at first but, the idea is growing on me.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
As the politically correct SJW crybullies slowly destroy Twitter, it will be interesting to see if Silicon Valley's shallow cultural leftist elite finally wake up and start pushing back. A lot of them like Twitter and some of them invested money in it.
The media like Twitter too, but the media are unreformable; a lost cause in every way.
I work in a job where (as a "thought leader") I'm supposed to tweet regularly, but I never, ever find time to read anything from Twitter. It's a write-only assignment as far as I'm concerned - it could be /dev/null for all I know or care.
I'll bet there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people like me out there too, all dumping regularly scheduled 140-character tweets into a space probably half populated with advertiser's bots using keyword-based algorithm to retweet, favorite and react to my stuff, all for the benefit of even more robots.
Sadly, one side effect of internet anonymity is that people feel they can be complete assholes without consequence.
obligatory xkcd: https://www.penny-arcade.com/c...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
And it's readily apparent that unfiltered access into the aggregate human psyche has proven time and again that despite the oft-cited belief that humans are fundamentally good -- they are really not.
#NotAllHumans
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
>Fry's latest exit from Twitter (there have been several over the last few years for numerous reasons)
The fucks not given kinda remind me of his Gordon Deitrich. It sounds like when he gets fed up he simply walks off. Like he doesn't believe in the power that pixels on a screen have. Which we all know is wrong, angry internet words warrant five-figure support stipends.
I'm guessing "bag lady" is supposed to be some mudblood namecalling, but I'm still pretty sure I've seen darker friend roasts.
I keep seeing the argument that basically boils down to: Freedom of speech is under attack from people that feel entitled to say whatever they want.
I've read through the comments hoping that someone would explain what a bag lady is. No luck. Apparently it's just a homeless person.
I'd kinda like to read what got people so up in arms about that, but not enough to actually go to Twitter and find out for myself.
The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
Nope, no sig
Stephen Fry is bipolar. I would not be surprised if these shutdowns occur with the state of mind. He really shouldn't be on there at all if he's so sensitive to criticism particularly since he has come close to suicide several times before.
Useless wallies that wish they were you. We have wallies here in Coren22, Amicusnycl, JustAnotherOldGuy, Dave420, gstoddart, Zontar The Mindless, and more. We recognize them as useless shills for inferior products and their agendas as well as mere puny trolls.
children.
But make no mistake, the screeching children ARE the revolution. Hurry up and die, intelligent people.
-Legal.Troll
It is more fun to troll anonymously. Suppression of speech has manufactured Donald Trump's candidacy.
From his blog post:
An old friend of his might have commended him thusly: @Fry sinister bullshit bullseye
People getting outraged over stuff that doesn't concern them isn't new with twitter...
http://www.gocomics.com/bloomc...
commentSubjectsAreDumbTheArticleIsTheSubject
No, they're a fine idea, just like usenet and email. And the subject isn't apparently the article any more.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Fry's struggles with his many demons are well-known; depression is one of them, and other public figures are know to wrestle with that too, (Winston Churchill talked about "the black dog" and lay in bed for days. The late, great Peter Sellers was another one). /., if they were talking to a real person in front of them.
OK "public figures" are going to have to accept that some crap goes with the territory, and if you tweet -well - people tweet back.
But I wonder how many people would repeat what they tweet, or even write what they do here on
I feel for you, I really do, but dude... It's Twitter. It just doesn't matter much. Really.
Slashdot might as well start reporting on what popstar1 said (right before dropping the mic) to popstar2 at an awards ceremony. And it'd be "tech news" because it's a digital wireless microphone.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
99.9% of the internet is a smelly pit full of shit. That's the ugly truth. Far from being the greatest human invention ever, the internet is a mirror of what mankind really is: an open sewer where turd icebergs float on an ocean of piss swarming with fecesfishes. In this stinking, putrid environment of everdefecation what can one do but extraniate oneself from the overbearing fecalism and simply flush the shitverse away?
Because in the grand scheme of things and the world in general Twitter is insignificant. It could disappear tomorrow and have zero effect on my life. Same goes for Facebook and whatever social media platform is "in" now.
...is no big loss. Well, it can be if you're relying on it for fast updates of whatever (of say local events such as bad weather) but there are alternatives aplenty.
One of the more liberating things I ever did was put my Facebook account into deletion (don't deactivate it, make sure you actually delete it, or it doesn't really go away.) I haven't looked back once and have no regrets. Between the most vapid of "friends" many of whom I didn't actually know, and bullshit like Farmville and Mafia Wars, it was nothing but a sinkhole.
Twitter has many striking similarities.
If you want to be an attention whore you will attract attention...good and bad. I use it to listen and contribute and do not have to deal with the nastiness. This means following people you find interesting, not following every shmoe who follows you. Have something interesting to say in my line of technology and I will follow you. I will not engage in bullshit conversations with people who only post selfies and have nothing good or interesting to say.
It's the attention whoring that is out of control on twitter, too bad for them because it is a good platform. Facebook is for sharing with close friends and family. Twitter is for sharing with like minded professionals. (stay away from religion and pop culture and horrible people and you will find it quite engaging).
I am no social media guru, but I am seeing a slow trend toward abandoning social media. I myself eradicated my facebook account several years ago. Why? So much endless bullshit and a total waste of time. From there I migrated to a young, sparsely populated Google+. It was good for awhile. A few weeks ago I deleted my G+ account. Why? So much bullshit and a total waste of time. Never had a twitter account and never will. I will admit that I am as of recently on Diaspora, and while I have reservations of it turning into so much shit, it is actually pretty easy to tune out what you don't want and most people only post casually and not so frequently since there is no model for a popularity contest in place. It's decentralized, federated model is pretty unique to. Yet I suspect that at some time in the future I will abandon it over... so much bullshit. I know a lot of people from many walks of life who, reluctantly, dropped social media. I know the likes of Facebook and Twitter have massive user bases, but it is a start and the citizens of the internet like trends. Social media is a blight on human civilization, I can only hope that at some point it will in fact come to an end.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Stealth Mountain is a Twitter bot that tersely informs Twitter users when they mistakenly write “sneak peak": @___ I think you mean sneak peek.
The enraged, frothing responses confirm that this is an exemplar of how Twitter should be used.
I used to read Slashdot but I quit in 1993 when I realized its downward spiral. However I programmed a bot that occasionally posts this answer to random comments. Sometimes (like in the present case) it is even related.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I was a late adopter to Twitter, and social media in general, mostly because I used to see them only as a mean for teenagers to share pictures of them eating doritos or doing duck kisses selfies. But then, as in anything created, I'm always trying to see how I could use things for meaningful purpose, and I found Twitter to be like a RSS feed on steroids. It allows me to get the latest activities from researchers, or quick knowledge on the latest vuilnerabilities without browsing 10-12 different websites. Yeah you have the occasionally shitpost or cat video, but every website have their low quality content, including Slashdot. I also find out it was a great way to share events, news and tutorials with my team quickly, as anyone reading something worthwhile would be able to share it without composing yet another email in my inbox with only a link.
Twitter, like any other social media can become toxic, mostly due to which topics you decide to follow or discuss. Especially topics that relies on belief rather than facts or data. Politics, religion, and pretty much any "-ism" are attracting loud and emotional participants for which the "feeling" of being right based on whatever show or blog they read, is good enough. No amount of logic will change their opinion. Unless you're ready to lose time and energy on these particular subjects, limit your connections to quality people and topics. I'd rather put my resources in place I can actually contribute something, which these people will never do.
Twitter or Facebook might go the same way as MySpace is now, however social media will survive in some form or another, especially as South-East Asia countries continue to connect to the Internet. They may become more regional such as Cloob, Weibo or BKontakt: people still need to communicate, despite the large increase of noise in the past decade. Like in anything else, it's a matter of adjusting your SNR.
@cyberrecce
so if TFA were 'Trump posts 'Rubio is a p***y on Twitter', are we having the same reaction on in the /. community? Methinks not. What I'm not getting is who the heck this Stephen Fry is, and why he is some magical barometer of the twitter-verse imploding.
For me, I don't follow twitter - after I realized I'd unknowingly blocked some losers who turned out to be the twitter founder and the CISO of Cisco for posting inanities of their recent meeting and workout regimen or their Sunday use of their bagel guillotine, respectively. But I still think Twitter holds lots of value for those - however insane - to post, and let the stupid press, or the smart press like Daily Show, or even say ESPN, highlight notable tweets for me.
...of a platform from which to savage celebrities or those with greater achievement.
Never understood the point of Twitter. It sounds worse and worse. Good riddance.
Don't step on the baby.
If someone like Stephen Fry is fed up with the social justice warriors ruining Twitter with their rabid offence taking, then that's got to be a major sign that Twitter is on the decline. If Jack Dorsey continues to capitulate to the feminazis then Twitter will end up like MySpace. It's already heading in that direction.
You know, I don't think he was being sarcastic, actually. Which is very sad because people who believe in "safe spaces" and "triggering" (ROFLMAO) are ruining free speech, and the media are enabling them. We need a replacement for Twitter, one whose founding principle is the protection of free speech.
The tyranny of the terminally offended special snowflakes....
Seriously, you could tweet "I like kittens" and you would probably get 1000 SJWs berating you for triggering them or appropriating "animal culture" or contributing to the objectification of animals.
The fact that a guy like Stephen Fry up and left the festering cesspool known as twitter gives me hope for the human race.
He's a hell of a nice guy, yet that was no defense against the perpetually offended crybullies that infest twitter.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You know, the same group which is anti-harassment, the SECOND you cross these motherfuckers they will hound the shit out of you, doxx you, try their darndest to hurt you (normally your place of employment) etc.
Say something they disagree with and instead of them saying "fuck you cunt" they say, what I think is much worse, lies : "you're a racist!" "you're a homophobe!" etc, they'll try to spin things about you which are obviously not positive things (I'm not endorsing racism / homophobia)
There is an endless race it seems to be the most politically correct, it's quite literally (literally!) the current 'fad' right now. Who can be the most offended? Who has the most empathy? It's ME! It's ME! (stamps foot!) I am the one who cares the most about .
Thing is, there's nothing inherently wrong with being for peoples rights, obviously. It's the methodology used, the cultish "with us or against us, outright!" attitude, the censorship of those who don't just disagree but dare to even begin to ask questions.
Furthermore, I'm truly not convinced a lot of these people actually believe all this, DEEP DOWN. On the surface they do but they don't know why. I get the impression many of the people in the extremist PC group are white, straight and somewhat well off.
I see it on my facebook feed, I can think of 2 people out of my mere 55 friends who have both made a point of posting pro gay rights stuff or chiming in on other topics which I know for a FACT these people have said quite harsh things about these groups previously and not that long ago.
To wind back on topic, poor Stephen Fry thinks twitter is fully of bullies, the same dipshits (or similar dipshits) who abused him off of twitter will again, point their fingers and angrily shout "see it's bullies!! we need even more politically correct tools, censorship, filters and algorithm based tweets to hide these angry people" not seeing the irony of the behaviour within many of the extremist PC ranks.
Honestly I tire of it. Try and have a rational discussion with them though and sooner or later they'll find the ammo to label you something or other awful.
You mean BAFTAs.
There is no one so far to the left that, eventually, they will not be attacked -- from someone even *farther* to the left.
Go ahead and laugh. You'll laugh, you good progressive -- until the surreal moment when it happens to you.
I was of the understanding that the Trust and Safety Council was specifically invented to protect the "offended" crowd.
These people seem to turn "being offended" into a profession.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Though more frequently used in other contexts (controversies involving Islam), I believe the new term "regressive left" is apt. These are people who exaggerate anti-bigotry ideals to the point where they end up contradicting the very foundations of liberalism: liberty, individualism and tolerance.
It's a handy way of pointing out that progressivism can be taken to the point of self-contradiction, without necessarily damning the very ideal of progressivism. On the other hand, "SJW" as a pejorative can carry an ambiguous implication that the speaker disapproves of the entire (admittedly ill-defined) concept of social justice.
The case that most people lead constructive lives is obvious just looking at human history. Would we have advanced so far from hunter / gatherers had everyone been tearing everything down?
That it took several hundreds of thousands of years, or millions, to do so is precisely because "we" were constantly tearing each other down. Anyone smarter, ie different (uppity etc) was killed off pretty early back in those good old ancient days. That we somehow managed to get past that to the fragile position we are now in is practically a miracle at any length of time and even now you still see that same old dynamic at work in every day life constantly and tirelessly trying to suck us all back down again.
becoming aware that social media is more akin to a middle school playground than some sort of modern and progressive kind of way to communicate.
I mean, come on people, social media is paid for the same shitty ways regular media is - by manipulating you into buying shit that you do not need.
And you wonder why your most remarkable technological achievements always turns to shit. You keep doing the same tired horse shit and expecting something different.
For the record, Trump claims to attend the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica Queens, however I recall some reporter asking them about Trump and the response was pretty much "Donald who?" (Had he been a tithing member, you could be damn sure they would be singing his praises...) How the evangelical vote goes to Donald, who trades in wives for newer models like trading cars, is beyond me. In the past he has supported gay rights, abortion, and Bill Clinton's affair. A strange bedfellow with evangelicals indeed, but politics does that..
#KillAllHumans (and bite my shiny, metal ass)
Whether it's a "founding principle" or not doesn't mean much once the whinging hordes strike. Just look at what happened to reddit, which also had free speech as a "founding principle."
OT: Not sure why it's posting me as AC when I'm logged in. -- GeminiDomino
you had one. it was called 4chan. is there a tag for sarcasm/2?
Then they need to allow importing of blocklists and bulk management of settings. Then we could apply the equivalent of Adblock lists to trolls of whatever stripe.
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