The answer to that question, in short, is no.
That’s not because I follow Stephen and don’t want him to leave the service, but simply because one person branding him as ‘boring’ is not really a reason to leave. If Stephen himself is becoming bored by the Twitter phenomena that he, himself, helped to accelerate then that’s a different reason but, sadly, when you put yourself in the public spotlight, there will always be a contingent who will have something negative to say.
This week, Paul Daniels also found himself on the receiving end of some pretty mean comments about his height and, in the end, he decided to take a few days break from the service. Perhaps this tactic would benefit Mr Fry, and would possibly help him while he’s feeling a little low.
Quite frankly, however, it is amazing that this has become the news story that it seems to have become. Certainly, Stephen has been a huge advocate of Twitter and has helped grow its popularity in the micro-blogging arena, but is his possible departure from the service really worth a discussion group on the BBC’s website? Before we know it, it’ll be a topic on an upcoming episode of Question Time…
When I was a kid, I was always taught to ignore bullies and they’d eventually go away. It didn’t always work quite as effectively as my parents had hoped, as kids tend to just become more and more mean when their abuse doesn’t seem to be working, or they store it up for later use, but there is certainly a strong argument for being the ‘bigger’ man and rising above the meanness; and, most of the time, simply walking away from conflict did work.
The rise of the Internet and mobile phone technology, however, has seen “cyber-bullying” become ever-more prevalent, and ignoring abusive text messages can be harder than avoiding the taunts in the classroom.
The reason for Mr Fry’s musings about leaving the service seem to have come from one individual branding his posts on Twitter as “… a bit … boring… (sorry Stephen)”, which to me doesn’t really warrant being branded as “too much aggression and unkindness”, which was Stephen Fry’s initial response.
There are certainly many more users of Twitter out there who post far more boring updates than Stephen Fry does (myself included, probably – I’ve just posted one about how many miles per gallon my Renault did in October, for crying out loud!) but, with 929’686 followers, there are certainly many more people out there who find him interesting than there are who don’t.
Looking at Stephen’s Twitter updates this morning, it looks like he’s making peace with the chap who branded him boring in the first place. So maybe he’ll stay after all, and that sort of makes this blog a little bit redundant.
And more than a little bit boring…
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Stephen Fry’s Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenfry
Paul Daniels’ Twitter: http://twitter.com/thepauldaniels
The bloke who didn’t really bully Stephen: http://twitter.com/brumplum
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2 comments:
I've never Twittered. But I have heard of the 140 character limit, so it seems crippled.
Twitter is a pioneer at this, and it seems typical that the pioneer in the tech world gets shot full of arrows, and the 2nd or 3rd immitator is the one that really hits big. Like Google building on the path blazed by Altavista, or Facebook building on Myspace.
The next company that will trump Twitter probably won't have arbitrary limits.
I agree, but I also think that the 140 character limit is a genius idea - it means the user has to really concentrate to make his 'tweet' interesting in just 140 characters. The best ones are those who don't have to use 'text style' abbreviations to make their posts interesting or witty in the space required.
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