The fatal click
Be careful what you like where others can see you.
In 2023 the playwright David Greig had to apologise to staff at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, where he was artistic director, for being “careless and harmful” after “liking” two tweets that a writer alleged were transphobic.
Yes children that’s right, there are people monitoring what you “like” (i.e. what you register your liking of or agreement with or respect for by clicking the “Like” button on one social media platform). Who knew anyone had the time? Let alone the inclination? Let alone the malice and stupidity and feeling of entitlement to tell all of us what we can and can’t say or even “like”?
And here I thought the Stasi had been put out of business with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Silly me.
Imagine what things would be like if this lot had even more power than they do now.
Greig is a very good playwright. Some friends of mine put on an excellent production of a play of his in Japanese translation here some years ago. I was appalled when I heard that he had been ritually humiliated in this way – but in Scotland this sort of thing, which has been backed by the SNP for years, is, it seems, all too common.
I’m left-handed, which means I touch the left side of my phone screen to scroll, so I accidentally “like” things on facebook all the time because right-handed people decided to put the react buttons on the left. Presumably to prevent people accidentally “liking” things all the time.
Just putting that here in case anyone ever needs an excuse ;)
Here are the tweets for which he was bullied into apologising:
Rosie Aspinall Priest acts like a priest. Not in a good way.