Why shoot the bird?

This week the media and social networks (Twitter in particular) have been crammed full of shite about shooting the bird, in more ways than one it would seem. First we had the information on the overpaid footballer who couldn’t keep his tool in his trousers and (apparently) shagged a pretty Welsh girl. Next there was uproar that people were actually discussing the matter by electronic means, whilst the disgruntled mainstream media had been effectively gagged because of a ‘super injunction‘.

WTF, am I the only person who really couldn’t give a stuff about so-called celebrities and their extramarital giggs? It’s sad, that our so obviously small lives, can get so interested and embroiled with the detail of where some Ponce dips his wick after 90 minutes of kicking the wrong shaped bag of wind around a field. There are far more important issues to discuss here that could impact upon our lives. One such issue was highlighted by Chris Summers at the BBC who asked: Could Twitter become a threat to the justice system?

During the row over privacy injunctions, critics have emphasised that it is near impossible to stop people revealing information on Twitter. But what if people use it to name victims in rape cases or reveal information from court that could see trials abandoned? (BBC News Magazine)

I don’t think Twitter, or any other social media tool for that matter, is a ‘threat’ per se. No, the problems are more related to humans and how we actually use the technology. As Richard Littledale rightly said in his Preacher’s A – Z blog…

…shouldn’t we remember that the heart of this story is not actually about Twitter or newspapers, but about privacy and gagging? The fact that we have found out about draconian gagging orders through Twitter should make us question the orders themselves rather than the means through which we heard about them, surely? (Read more)

The human race has always had a propensity for gossip, be it face to face over the garden fence or now via more modern electronic means. The fact remains that much of this idle gossip, without fact or evidence, can now go viral and spread uncontrolled like wildfire across the world. The ‘uncontrolled factor’ is the actual problem but should it be really be controlled in the first place? Are we all not entitled to our personal opinions?

Twitter may have been credited with helping topple Arab dictatorships. But Britons seem to have turned the site to a different use. Without fear of, or respect for, our own courts and their injunctions, people feverishly transmit the names of footballers and other personalities who have taken out gagging orders to protect them from being linked to stories of sexual indiscretion…(guardian.co.uk)

Perhaps we all need to take greater care with our ethics, put more thought into the things we do and the impact upon others? We should certainly think about what we say, often without foundation, before we say it and just perhaps, footballers will stop knobbing out-of-wedlock? No, I didn’t think so!

Don’t shoot the messenger… After all, he’s not really big enough to make a descent pie filling now is he?

Related articles

• Moderation and ‘superinjunctions’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Twitter posts prosecution urged (bbc.co.uk)
• Tweets about super-injunction footballer spike after attempts to gag Twitter (telegraph.co.uk)
• Twitter fires up privacy debate in Britain (theworld.org)