Why Morrissey should get off Twitter – and take a few people with him – Telegraph Blogs

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Martha Gill

Martha writes about politics and science. She has also written for the FT, the Times, and the Guardian, and has appeared on The Today programme, BBC News and Sky News. Previously, she was a staffer at the New Statesman where she wrote a weekly behavioural economics column. Her old posts are here

Why Morrissey should get off Twitter – and take a few people with him

Photo: Geoff Pugh

If the social media revolution has any abiding lessons for mankind, it’s that many of us really shouldn’t be on Twitter. This is especially true if one or more of the following applies:

1. You are Morrissey

Morrissey joined Twitter yesterday. He has tweeted twice.  His first was:

“Hello. Testing, 1,2,3. Planet Earth, are you there? One can only hope…”

And his second tweet was:

“Follow, follow, follow. Twitter is the perfect metaphor for… something. Dunno what.”

These went down fairly well – the second got 16,000 retweets. But the trouble is they sound like first drafts of Morrissey lyrics. Or at least how I imagine the first drafts went. “I was looking for a job and I found… something. Dunno what. (Come back to later.)” “There is a light that never goes… hmmm. Dunno what. (Come back to later.)”

This often happens when someone famous goes on Twitter. You see their unedited thoughts and it kind of ruins things. There are very few who have enough good aperçus to keep up a sparkling persona 24 hours a day. And some get needy, which is weird. Stephen Fry: case in point. Much better to perpetuate the mystery than bore us rigid.

2. You are a politician

You know what the perfect social medium for politicians is? Instagram. With Instagram you can stay on-message without becoming boring. (Nice orange-filtered factory visits, pictures of interesting burgers, that kind of thing.) Twitter’s demands are much higher – pretty much the same as those of a particularly tricky interviewer. Twitter demands something more than the party line – preferably something mean or snarky (never a good idea), something personal (never a good idea), or something accidental (Ed Balls).

It also gives people a large platform on which to insult you. This really shouldn’t matter, but it does. A study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that vitriolic, name-calling comments underneath articles (even entirely factual ones) has a large effect on how other readers interpret them. See someone insult a politician, and you will probably start to think less of them.

3. You are a large corporation

Large corporations are similarly hamstrung by having to be professional, so they can’t engage with Twitter on the right level. And when they do, something horrible happens. Like this cosy chat between Jaffa Cakes, Tesco Mobile and Yorkshire Tea which should never have been allowed to happen. Let’s hope it never happens again.

4. You are Yoko Ono

If you are a spiritual person, like Yoko Ono, Twitter is hard. Her messages to the world are uplifting:

“Clean up the water inside your body. Let’s be the oasis for the world. If you don’t announce it, it will be felt by the whole world”

And: “This is a piece of sky. Hold on to it. After ten years we will get together and put the sky back into one piece”

But people are just refusing to be nourished in the way they should. Particularly Andy Murray’s mum.

5. You are the Pope

One innocent typo – one “let us spray” rather than “let us pray”, and everyone goes crazy. Moral: don’t pope and tweet.


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