On Saturday evening, former member of Monty Python Eric Idle tweeted, “I will not leave without saying goodbye. And I will miss many of you.”
For those with a normal sense of proportion you could be forgiven for thinking that Idle was in fact signalling from his deathbed, in the last throes as a comedy legend, and preparing us all for him becoming an ex-Python.
The truth is, as is all too common these days, terribly disappointing.
Idle was merely another celebrity balking at Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and using the proposal of the $8 blue tick charge as cover for their hissy fit. An entitled personality flouncing off because someone changed the rules of their lop-sided game.
Meanwhile novelist Stephen King waded in saying, “Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” And then following up to accusations about him being cheap with, “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing.”
Stephen King and Eric Idle are two of the more well-known types to ‘threaten’ with leaving Twitter. Others ‘making news for leaving Twitter’ are less famous. The list reads like a ‘Who’s that?’ of planet celebrity. Various departure announcements have come from Shonda Rhimes, Alex Winter, Sara Bareille, Mick Foley (no, no, nope, and no me neither), model Gigi Hadid and singer Toni Braxton.
Actress Tea Leoni couldn’t have written a more Hollywood tweet saying, “Today… has revealed too much hate, too much in the wrong direction,”. She added, “Love, kindness, and possibilities for all of you.” Just to make sure we knew she was more or less the actress version of an angel.
The cynics among you could think that this was part-virtue signalling, part-publicity mining. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and think they are actually leaving. Why?
These celebrities have in their swathes remained silent while many women have been harassed and threatened on the platform for speaking on the ‘gender debate’. So why is it that all of a sudden they’re worried about Twitter becoming a toxic place with ‘free speech absolutist’ Musk at the wheel?
Is it that Musk has promised to open up the algorithms and authenticate human accounts to defeat the legions of bots and fake accounts that plague the platform? Or that he may reinstate Donald Trump’s account?
Or is this little tantrum because they are concerned that we see more speech and less ‘supression’ on a platform often described as the digital town square?
Musk is no fool and has said that he doesn’t want Twitter to become a “hellscape” for advertisers and a free for all that no one wants to be on. He has said he will keep Twitter’s rules within legal bounds and create a content moderation council made up of diverse viewpoints. So, what’s the problem?
After he fired the CEO, CFO, and Policy Chief, you could almost hear the nervousness of certain individuals who have benefited from picking and choosing their tribes and ideologies, comfortable in the knowledge that the corporate cabal that is the Twitter hierarchy has their back if someone says, ‘the wrong thing’.
That hierarchy were, of course, also the ones who bestowed the blue ticks. And why are blue ticks so important anyway? Well, one could argue that rather than some kind of ‘authentication’ signifier or metric, they are also Twitter’s own little class system. Something to tell the great unwashed from intellectual and political juggernauts like Toni Braxton.
Perhaps that even with their endless striving for equality, those with blue ticks rather enjoy this corporate hierarchy. And yet, all of a sudden they’re worried about who owns big tech.
One of the upsides of Musk’s takeover could be that people like Graham Linehan or Meghan Murphy who were permanently banned from Twitter, might be allowed back on.
Father Ted creator Linehan was banned for ‘repeated violations’ which allegedly included replying to the Women’s Institute that, “men aren’t women tho’ when they wished their trans members a happy Pride.
Feminist commentator Murphy was permanently banned (with the usual lack of specifics around which rule or rules she broke) for the mildest of Tweets about trans ideology including, “What’s the difference between a man and a transwoman?”, misgendering an individual, and then the most blasphemous, “Men aren’t women”.
Meanwhile, Murphy herself received death and rape threats, as so many women on that side of the debate do. I don’t recall Tea Leoni and Stephen King standing up for Meghan at the time.
If allowing people like Murphy back on the platform, someone who speaks with intelligence and passion on that subject, to counter the fatuous mantras parroted by every air-headed celeb with an opposable thumb is one of the outcomes of Musk’s purchase, then Twitter will be a better place for it.
Entitled Eric Idle meanwhile said something else we can all surely relate to, “I shall stay until (Musk) tries to charge me for the tick that affirms it is me. After that my only dilemma is whether to dump the Tesla too….”.
Thanks Eric, chin up champ. And do try to always look on the bright side of life.
Tom James
