Only last week I was following the uproar in the UK about “abusive tweets” with a measure of disbelief. We’d been there before – how seriously should twitter and social media statuses be taken? Should the tools who abuse the tools be punished? The UK government was pretty serious about regulating twitter especially to protect people from threats. I had mixed feelings about it all – how seriously should we consider status updates and tweets?
Then came Salamis. We’ve all heard how hordes of Maltese intelligentsia swarmed onto Cecilia Malstorm’s facebook page with all form of abuse. It was shock therapy as we had never seen it. You did have the suspicion during the past election that the importance given to the internet and its content by the general citizen collective had taken a weird and surreal twist. I am sure that there is a huge study to be made in marketing and advertising to the particular niche that we know as the Maltese crowd but still…
The PLPN moulded their supporters into an Orwellian vortex worthy of quite a study. There was a false sense of empowerment (say what you like and you will be heard) and there was an abuse of the propagandistic side of the medium. The majority of the citizens had not caught on to the emerald and noise and still believed that the Wizard behind the curtain was the most powerful thing in Oz. We all know how things proceeded since then: the nationalist party imploded choking on a nut while the labour party segued onto government by words and tweets.
The worst offender is the PM himself what with his non-sensical twitter account that is about as politically proper as Frankie Boyle on a trip. Then there are the abusers of the media – such as that DJ turned architect – who adds a new “blog” and shoot “aphorisms” without batting an eyelid. Which brings me to facebook. PLPN candidates bored us mental with their daily “tying my shoelaces” updates during the election. The impression was that they would “listen”. Sure. What they did do once the election is over is forget any semblance of institutional decorum, bury any notion of rule of law and murder any possibility of quiet government.
Do you blame the noisy bunches on Facebook now? Add to that the fact that they are the bunches who are most encouraged by this government’s ridiculous bandwagon grandstanding – oblivious to the hopelessness behind the moves and oblivious to the fact that they are just pawns in this power game.
So yes, we had a lot of noisy, uncouth energumens flooding to Malstorm’s page. First reaction: So what? As someone put it succinctly, the Greeks have been directing much verbal abuse in the direction of anything EU/German. Second reaction: So what? It’s not like we did not know that a huge chunk of our voting electorate was clueless about rights, politics and social interaction. Facebook is just throwing an ugly window open onto a part of our society.
It’s our society being thrown back in your face. In your face book actually.
