After our relatively upbeat look at the 2014 Kawaii Metal explosion (which seems to have only upset one or two people), it’s time for the second part of the Strange Things look back at 2014. And the fun stops here, as we take an overview of how the last twelve months have seen a continuing explosion in the war on free expression – from state censorship to student union band to relentless petitions from people who have taken their lessons from the likes of Mary Whitehouse and Christian Voice… namely that if you don’t like something, you are perfectly entitled to try and prevent anyone else from seeing /hearing / attending it.
As with the last few years, 2014 was marked mostly by Twitter outrage. This exists in two forms, though both are linked. The first involves someone, somewhere, finding something offensive and managing to whip up a storm of protest and hatred that is usually based on nothing more than an initially subjective tweet, misleading headline, fatuous meme or nonsensical story from websites with names like therealtruth.com (if there’s actually a website of that name out there, sorry!). Things like objective facts are hard to come by in these cases – instead, we have words and actions taken out of context (we all know how easy it is to have a sarcastic statement taken at face value when written down, after all), with no examination of the facts behind the fury. Sometimes, these are trivial matters, sometimes deadly serious. Yet all impact on the lives of others, and it seems to me that mob rule on Twitter is only a step away from vigilante justice that ends with a paediatrician’s house being burned down.
Of course, Twitter is at its ‘best’ when attacking its own. Say something terrible on your blog and you might get away with it. Offend the hive mind on Twitter and you are doomed. Not only will the Twitch hunters pass out the flaming torches to the angry mob, but they’ll report you to the police too. And while the cops might not be able to track down the people who broke into your house or mugged you next to the cash point, they’ll pull out all the stops to arrest someone for making an ‘offensive’ tweet. This doesn’t have to be a comment that transgresses any of Britain’s laws against hate speech, or even an impotent threat (and hyping impotent threats into serious crimes has certainly be a trait of 2014). It can be something as simple as a tasteless joke of the sort that people have been making about tragedies and crimes since jokes existed. The situation became so out of control this year that the DPP actually issued guidance to explain when a tweet became potentially criminal – and the bar was supposedly set rather high, and allowed for angry drunk tweets to be deleted within a reasonable time without further action being taken. Of course, the police have roundly ignored this: at Christmas, a man was arrested for tweeting a joke about the Glasgow bin lorry massacre, even though he deleted it within a couple of hours. And today, Police Scotland, in a message that would make Orwell’s Big Brother proud, have tweeted “Please be aware that we will continue to monitor comments on social media & any offensive comments will be investigated.” Note, incidentally, that ‘offensiveness’ is not actually a crime.
 Back when some poor bugger was arrested for joking about bombing East Midlands Airport, the great and good of Twitter were up in arms to defend the rights to free speech and the ability to make off-colour comments. Notably, Stephen Fry et al have been rather silent this year as more and more people have been arrested and charged, sometimes fined and sometimes imprisoned for using words. They were admittedly more vocal in the case of Dapper Laughs – his fellow comedians lined up to sign a letter condemning him and his ‘laddish’ humour as beyond the pale. Now3, I’d never heard of Dapper Laughs until the shit hit the fan, and frankly, he sounds dreadful – he’s a man who got a comedy series on ITV3 for crying out loud! How much more awful could he be? I hate the idea of defending him, because my natural instincts are to want him to go as far away as possible. But the virulent campaign against him was genuinely unpleasant and worrying. Already upset by his sexist humour, a ‘rape joke’ (again, reported without context or nuance) spurred his opponents on to launch a relentless campaign that included the now-mandatory change-org petitions. No matter that Mr Laughs had far more Facebook followers than his detractors; no matter that, presumably, the people who had bought tickets for his live tour were not offended by his humour. Within a couple of weeks, the tour was scrapped, his TV show cancelled and the comedian forced to beg for forgiveness in TV news show trials.
Laughs’ biggest crime was to associated with ‘lad culture’, and in 2014, to be a ‘lad’ – that is, a young man who likes beer, birds and banter – was probably worse than being a child molester in some people’s eyes. Certainly, student unions across the country have done their best to crush laddishness in all forms. In doing so, they’ve also closed the lid on debate and discussion, infantilised students and promoted the idea that all men are predators and all women are victims. In banning everything from Blurred Lines and The Sun to political debates about subjects that are apparently beyond debate, they are increasingly cocooning students from the real world and imposing a singular vision of what is right and wrong that dictatorships would envy.
The banning of The Sun is, of course, part of the on-going No More Page 3 campaign, one of several tentacles in the well funded, media savvy RadFem anti sex movement (as representative of real feminism as ISIS is of Islam) that also includes Lose the Lads Mags and government funded ‘charities’ like Object. Given how much press these groups get, it’s easy to forget how fringe they are. Making entirely made-up claims about a connection between topless models and sexual violence, these groups have had a depressing amount of success by shouting very loudly and using social media to make themselves seem far more important and representative than they actually are. There’s an interesting, if depressing look at how they brought down lads mag here.
 It’s not just lad culture that has been under attack of course. Women who have had the audacity to express themselves sexually, like Miley Cyrus, have been widely attacked. Much like the women who appeared in Nuts or on Page 3, Miley, we were told, couldn’t possibly be making a conscious choice – she had to be a victim of a patriarchal culture or an overly sexualised society, depending on which side of the political divide you came down on. Or else, in the grand tradition of slut shaming that always provides a fallback when claims of false consciousness fail, she is just an attention-hungry bad influence on our children.
The attacks on sexuality that have run through 2014 are part of a wider culture of miserablism – if you enjoy something, you can bet there will be someone out there trying to stop you from doing so. The War on Booze has continued throughout the year, from the ASA banning ads that dared to suggest that drinking was fun through to the various prohibitionist campaigns. We now have Dryanuary and Stoptober, both events that masquerade as charity fundraisers but are more about the denormalisation of alcohol. If you want to give money to charity in January, by all means do so – but don’t do it by offering support to the likes of Alcohol Concern, who would stop you ever being able to drink if they could.
If there is a silver lining in all this, it might be that the tide is slowly turning. When scientist Matt Taylor was singled out by opportunist tweeters for abuse after wearing a burlesque themed shirt on TV after LANDING A FUCKING SPACECRAFT ON A COMET, his supporters rapidly outweighed his opponents. The British public have so far overwhelmingly rejected David Cameron’s Porn Block when offered to them (though the ISPs are continually pushing people to take it up) and the recent announcement of new ATVOD rules to control the sort of porn we can watch online has met with surprisingly levels of anger and protest – even the British press, usually compliant in any story than paints the porn industry as evil, were shocked by these new restrictions.
Every action (eventually) has a reaction – no moral shift is forever. Just as the repressive nature of the 1980s gave way to a more liberal approach to sexuality, porn and pop culture in the mid-Nineties, so it seems that the current dominance of hard line moralists and the easily offended must come to an end eventually – though I imagine there are still rocky shores to navigate, and of course this time round, the miserablists have been in positions to put their beliefs into law. Still, we can only live in hope. Here’s to 2015 – let’s make it a good one.
DAVID FLINT |
