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'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.
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.
He's the guy from Futurama
rewriting history since 2109
She was dressed pretty meh for a costume designer.
Sadly, one side effect of internet anonymity is that people feel they can be complete assholes without consequence. They tend to take out their frustrations about their spouse, boss or family on some random victim on the internet because it makes them "feel better." Not that I'm for removing anonymity, it just the burden we bear for it.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Are we caring about that?
(Why is this appearing on Slashdot?)
Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
More like they are 10% not - but 10 cutting words can do more harm than a hundred "Oh don't listen to that jerk" hugs can repair. So it's not that humans aren't good, it's that enough of them are bad to make groups bad unless policed by good people. Twitter has no police. Every large group with no police becomes toxic, either physically or emotionally.
Brought to you by DNA (National Dyslexics Association).
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
Nope, no sig
It's like a shitter, but made especially for twats. Hence the portmanteau, twat shitter -> twitter.
From his blog post:
An old friend of his might have commended him thusly: @Fry sinister bullshit bullseye
A stereotypical homeless woman who wanders around the streets with bags of "stuff" she has collected, frequently recovered from garbage cans. The bags are frequently piled high in shopping carts, with other bags being held in a free hand and often even attached to her back. When the police crackdown on the homeless these women can be seen obsessively gathering up their bags and hauling them off to some other place. It's a real thing if you spent any time in a big city like New York. (Often in this case, the bags are full of recyclable cans and bottles, which return $.05/unit returned at recycling centers...or did 10 years ago when I lived there)
It's probably rude in polite company to use this term about an actual bag lady, it's ruder still to apply this to someone's appearance. But in the past one can be rude and crude and you simply ignored and avoided him. Now it seems as if a portion of the population feels empowered to make their own random comments based largely on ignorance and a misguided sense of judgement via Twitter. Turn-about is fair play I guess, but whatever happened to "taking the high road"?
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.
Humans ARE fundamentally good. The good outweighs the bad by a huge margin or there wouldnt be 7 billion of us. That doesnt mean that the good can 100% suppress the bad. We are still part beast, and are often driven by base animalistic desires. Until we admit that, there will be little progress in this area.
Good-bye
He's a delightful person, much beloved in the UK, but definitely not as known in the US. He's known for being 1/2 of the comedy sketch duo "Fry & Laurie" (Laurie being Hugh Laurie, aka Gregory House, M.D.) and for being the current host of the British program Q.I.
I thought I read that statistically Poles were smarter than the rest of Europe. Marie Curie, those guys that broke the Enigma before the war started, and so on.
My uncle was tending bar at one point in Chicago when a friend of his walked in. "John! I just heard the best joke ever! You have to hear this, it's great! So this Polack is trying to buy a watermelon, right? And—"
"Hey buddy, what's the big idea? Don't you know I'm Polish?"
"Oh! I'm so sorry! I had no idea. Okay, I'll tell it slow..."
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 think you'll find Stephen Fry is fully aware of the stereotypical homeless woman described as a bag lady.
Using the term to be rude about someone's description could be nasty, or it could be a joke. It could be both.
In context it was clearly a joke, especially given its reference to her profession.
Turnabout is not fair play. If they'd mocked Fry for his clothing it would have been misplaced (given what he wears when presenting QI, quite apart from anything else) but fair game. Harassing him for making a funny joke? Fuck that.
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
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...
For those who live outside the U.K It's hard to explain what Steven Fry means to a large proportion of the population and the esteem he is held in. We have the term national treasure to apply to people of Steven Fry's standing, a term that is not applied to many people. Steven Fry leaving Twitter will make the main news bulittins in the UK, and the question that will be asked by the media is what does this mean for the future of Twitter, does this mark the beginning of the decline of Twitter.
Those outside the UK will stuggle to believe that one man leaving Twitter could bring its prospects into question. However in UK when Twitter was starting to be know about, Steven Fry's presents on it was used to bolster its reputation. People took Twitter seriously because Steven Fry was on it. Steve Fry for a long time was the most followed person on Twitter, and every time the media mentioned Twitter Steven's bane followed shortly after.
I would frankly be amazed if questions are not raised in parliament about this matter. Again outside the UK some poeple will scream how stupid I am for saying this, however every time Steven has drawn attention to an Issue questions have been raised in parliament. If these statement surprise you in any way you've simply failed to appreciate how those of an intellectually bend in the UK regard Steven Fry.
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.
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.