Graffiti on the Cell Wall?

By Sandra Gibson - 8/10/2014

Someone dismissed all human expression as “graffiti on the cell wall”: a depressing metaphor for the human condition, which addresses the desperation for communication we all seem to have, judging by the number of status updates on social networks. It’s easy to criticise people who photograph their spag bol for the whole world’s approval and there are only so many cute Persian kittens you can tolerate in one day, yet there is poignancy and yes - desperation - in some of the posts of grief and hope and longing.

Kindness too. I have been surprised by the trouble complete strangers have gone to: finding me the exact garage for fixing a ball joint; recommending a chiropractor with warm hands; offering the recipe for that well-known cure for villainy – chrysanthemum tea.

This morning’s press brings news of the suicide of Brenda Leyland, exposed as a troll. Exposed as “the McCann’s troll”. Released from its previous role as ugly keeper of the bridge, the troll has a new media function: to vilify people, often those in the public eye, in the most extreme and threatening way. For goodness sake don’t ever suggest putting Jane Austen on a bank note; rape is too mild a punishment for you. It seems that trolling has offered a ‘safe’ forum for that personal Taliban moment of hateful self-expression which is absolutely justified and which completely obliterates the hurtful consequences. Brenda Leyland’s twitter name, Sweepyface, gave her the anonymity to express the unspeakable until a reporter unmasked her. A local commented: “someone took a photo of her on Thursday afternoon and then she was gone”.

Gone. Gone because she couldn’t face her Dorian Grey portrait? Gone because she could no longer hug her dark, power-giving secret? The compassionate view would be that the poor woman had mental problems and perhaps she did but a troll’s mercilessness is more likely to create derision in equal measure rather than commensurate compassion. And all this is self-perpetuating; Sky News and Martin Brunt have since been attacked for outing Brenda Leyland. Once you’re out there in the public arena, in whatever capacity, no prisoners are taken.

The worst aspect of this is that the pervasive kindness, daftness, humour, information, support, mild querulousness, light-heartedness, superficiality etc. etc. that characterises social networking can be cancelled out, at a stroke, by minority examples of human callousness and dangerous ignorance.

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