A Look at the Conduct of Graham Linehan and Others on Twitter

(December 2018 update: In the years since I wrote this Linehan's transphobia has grown and grown, and since July of this year he has made the decision to make the attack on a vulnerable minority a full time thing, tweeting his bigotry and lies about the transgender community quite literally ever single day. This obviously makes what's described here trivial by comparison.)

(The follow-up to this piece is here:
http://richardhcooper.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/speaking-for-those-who-already-have.html )

 (For an explanation of why I tweaked the title -  the piece itself is unaltered -  see the update below)

"Twitter made me", says the heading on The Guardian's latest interview with Graham Linehan (much to his consternation), but the question is, what has it made him into, and what kind of monster is it making of media bigshots? 

When I first followed Graham Linehan (@Glinner), we had a nice chat about Clive James, another hero of mine. He talked about his love of James's TV criticism, and I recommended his literary criticism, specifically the pieces on Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, and he then followed me back, sending me this: "Looking forward to your tweets." later on, we had another lovely exchange about One Foot in the Grave's placing in the great sitcom canon. I'd already been working on a heartfelt essay about Father Ted for my blog, championing it as the greatest sitcom this side of the Atlantic, and along with Seinfeld the greatest of all time. When I finished, I sent him a link to the piece by private message, and he sent me a warm private message back. That was a sunny day. 

I was excited that someone whose life's work I admired was following me, and paid attention to his tweets. He used Twitter intelligently, spotting good causes, new revelations and cutting through bullshit excuses. His takedown of the vile Toby Young after Young dismissed the Milly Dowler hacking story as "balls" and his campaign to challenge Fox News's lies about the NHS were good reasons for joining twitter in the first place [January 2015 update: the same goes for his other stances against rightwing scum such as Gamergaters or climate change deniers]. 

Around the same time, I noticed his weird attitude towards anyone who sent him a less than reverent tweet. Now, it is true that a flaw with twitter is that the "@" symbol and the word "mention" don't normally denote or even connote sending a message, but even so to send several bad-tempered tweets to a woman who told him he tweeted too much, or "and don't come back, shithead" to someone who put @ before his name in a tweet saying they had decided not to follow him anymore was not the kind of behaviour I joined twitter for. I couldn't imagine any of the other people I followed and interacted with on it (Lauren Beukes, for example, and Anne Billson: I've never seen a mean tweet from either of them) behaving like this. It got worse when I noticed that the hideous phrase "blocked for stupidity" was something of a catchphrase for him. He also wielded a blocking as a threat for anyone merely on the threshold of getting out of line: "hoping for a blocking, you two?" "Gah, gave you a chance. Blocked." "I'll overlook that obvious bit of trolling."

Things got worse when some poor devil - @jezwelshmon - tweeted to him that the films of Woody Allen were overrated: "Even the early films are shit, IMO.'#justsaying" . Glinner retweeted this with the word Blocked clamped over it. The Woody Allen heretic's subsequent tweets were like those of a lot of members of the public that have received public admonishment and blocking from this media figure: bemusement, unease (perhaps mindful of the army of supporters that Glinner has, that will take his side and could send further tweets the heretic's way) before ruefully changing the subject. Another tweeter, @culley25, had the guts to send this:

Grow up Graham for gods sake, blocking someone for having an opinion? Some advocate of free speech you are #hypocrite 

to which Glinner replied:

Only reason not blocking you is because you didn't write #justsayin, but I am going to try out this 'mute' option on tweetlogix

@culley25  pointed out:

He's not God, he doesn't have a divine right to have everything he says agreed with. [...] Also, Graham is not an idiot, he has a sizeable influence and by doing what he did he opens Jeremy [AKA @jezwelshmon] up to a lot of abuse. How rude and unnecessary is that? 

He later told me on Twitter that he hadn't even tweeted to Jeremy before, which increased my suspicion that the public, in sharp contrast to people in who work in the media, don't like bullying.

After sleeping on it, I realised which two people Glinner had begun to remind me of. One was Tommy Boyd, who was a presenter on the horrific TalkSport station in the years when I listened to it in insomniac hours (before the "so bad it's good" effect wore off). Boyd differed from the others in, as far as I remember, not being explicitly political: there was little stuff from him about the brilliance of George W Bush, the evil of Ken Livingstone, the non-existence of Global Warming and the madness of Political Correctness. Instead, Boyd would lose his temper with callers, indiscriminate of age or gender: "You'll probably hear him bullying an old woman in a moment" said my Dad, when he caught me listening to him, and it was this sentence which had come back to haunt me. I realised that scanning Glinner's Twitter feed was like listening to Boyd's show: waiting for an explosion towards a fairly innocuous member of the public.

The other was Ian Levine, a blight on the Doctor Who fan community for decades who violently insults anyone who disagrees with him about a television show. A man who, to use a quote from that very show, is "king of his own little world."

The crisis point came when Giles Coren was sent this tweet by Alice Vincent regarding an article of his:

Columnists basing their opinions around their children. So yawn. Your column today is one step up from a mumsnet blogpost 

Coren replied "Go fuck yourself, you barren old hag." Astonishingly, Glinner and two other media big cheeses - Charlie Brooker and Ben Goldacre - took the view that this was an understandable response to a very rude tweet, and that if one of those tweets was really was more offensive than the other, it wasn't Coren's. Glinner was angry and got angrier:

Looks like she set out to offend and upset him, so she shouldn't be surprised when he got offended and upset [...] that's not criticism, it's an obnoxious bit of trolling. I've no sympathy for trolls. 

Significantly, he pointed out that he too had problems with "trolls": “I just have sympathy for people who get nasty things sent to them on Twitter. Because it happens to me.” The rise of those plebs who wouldn't stop sending him inappropriate sentiments about the quality of Woody Allen's films clearly rankled. As his anger grew, he started to make more ludicrous claims for the integrity of Coren's tweet. He sent the Twitter equivalent of a telegram of congratulations to Coren

Just a quick congrats to @gilescoren for standing up for blogging mums last night. cc @trollsandtheirsupporters 

He now claimed that Alice Vincent had displayed a "casually contemptuous tone [...] towards Blogging mothers" and that Coren's wife and children had been insulted. Oddly enough, as that "cc" makes clear, this was clearly motivated more by spite against those that wouldn't stop Answering Back, hence his solo game of Chinese Whispers regarding Vincent's tweet. Indeed, Glinner pointed out he'd never met Coren. His dislike for those that supported the "blogging about your kids again/so yawn/mumsnet" comments had led him into bed with the devil, or at least a restaurant critic. An odd moment came when someone questioned whether someone who does what Coren does to restaurant proprietors should demand no criticism. Glinner replied: "it's completely different because he doesn't send the restaurant owners the review and ask that they read them." One might point out it's also completely different because Vincent's single tweet won't affect Coren's livelihood. Restaurant owners at the mercy of hacks like Coren are hardly comforted by the fact they don't have to read the paper: their customers will. Would Graham Lineham normally be defending a man like this?

Things got desperate when Linehan tweeted:

I'm sure his sister and wife will be surprised to hear that he HATES WOMEN 

 As one startled tweeter put it, Glinner was now reduced to the old "how can I hate women: my mum's one" defence. It seems unlikely someone that smart genuinely believes only the unmarried and sisterless ever make misogynistic remarks. Glinner was so determined to put these impudent puppies in their place, he was abandoning his usual reason.

The hideous term "trolls", previously reserved for the kind of racist or neo-Nazi filth people put in YouTube comments sections to get a reaction, was now being used to apply to the phrases "yawn" and "one step up from a mumsnet post". Unfortunately for Glinner, the trolls weren't shutting up. Eventually, he posted a blog account - "Incident at an otherwise enjoyable party", which put paid to any notion that the obnoxiousness of his tweets on this subject was due to the 140 character limit. Here, the closest he could come to condemning Coren's tweet was to say that he wished it had been more Wilde-like. Bizarrely, his attempts to reimagine the incident as if it had occurred at a party in order to make his point actually made his defence of Coren's foul outburst more inexplicable. What has happened to Graham Linehan if he genuinely thinks that if a young woman mocked Coren's latest article at a party and he roared "Go fuck yourself, you barren old hag", the people standing around with drinks would sympathise with Coren rather than either give him a wide berth or remonstrate with him?

Meanwhile, Alice Vincent, who had taken little part in the subsequent argument, had by now been called "shitty" "cowardly" "crap" "dickish" "obnoxious"' "no-class" a "twat" , a "prick" a "moron", a "dope" and a "troll" who had a "lot of growing up to do", all by Graham Linehan on the basis of "so yawn" and "one step up from a mumsnet post". Those that defended her were told to "fuck off", were "blocked for stupidity", were called "morons", "trolls" and "twats", all the time subject to what Glinner called " a spring-clean with the block-button".

Not long afterwards, a tweeter - @hallor - dared to send Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat a tweet that wasn't sycophantic. Moffat had decided to claim that River Song, a character on Doctor Who, was bisexual, and the tweeter raised the point that if her creator has to point this out, is it really much of an advance:

appreciate the thought but I don't understand how River works for bisexual visibility when people need to be told she is bi

Unnerved by these stimulating points, which attempted to complex questions to him rather than praise his work, Moffat replied the only way he could:

?????

Hallor replied:

If people need to be told she's bisexual, she's clearly not contributing to bisexual visibility. How is this hard to grasp?

Moffat replied:

When did I say I thought I was contributing to bisexual visibility?? Please stop being rude to me, you have no reason to be.

Hallor replied:

I've been nothing but polite. Disagreeing with your opinion on something does not automatically mean I'm being rude.

At this point Tom Spilsbury, the editor of Doctor Who Magazine, chipped in with:

The comment that was rude was the 'hard to grasp' one. I know, because I get strangers who talk to me like this too. It is rude.

Yes, "Why is this hard to grasp": it's the new rude. Personally, I'd rather have someone ask me "why is this hard to grasp?" then respond to an interesting point with "?????" (and what else does that denote if not an inability to grasp the point?)

One shudders to think what Moffat's followers then tweeted to @hallor. Heaven forbid that someone should say something heartfelt and interesting to Moffat about his work. If only they'd said "Matt Smith's brilliant! Are the Daleks coming back? Rory's my favourite." This wasn't the first time this had happened, although it was a new low that something so blatantly civil should be termed rude. A while back, someone tweeted Moffat asking if the next series of Doctor Who would feature a plot. Moffat blocked him, then unblocked him and sent him tweets asking him to go away. When several of the tweeter's friends pointed out he was perfectly entitled to express an opinion about his work, Moffat's media chum Caitlin Moran said to her friend: "And you're perfectly entitled to tell them to fuck off." Then faithful Tom Spilsbury sent the Moffat-offender tweets pointing out he had been a little rude: and reminding him that it was awfully stressful for a busy TV showrunner like Moffat having criticism of his work sent to him (One might put to Spilsbury the notion that the exciting thing about writing is stimulating debate, and interacting with people who don't quite see things your way. Or am I being rude?) (But see update below) As with his tweets to @hallor, his overall tone was of a primary school teacher that wasn't angry, wasn't telling you off, but just thought it's something you should have a little think about when you get home.

Goldacre and Brooker played this role in the Coren/Glinner affair. Brooker pointed out that Coren hadn't hit anyone, and suggested that both sides should "have an ice cream". Goldacre heard out the objections to Coren's tweet - all the time arguing that they were mistaken, and that most people would act as Coren had were they so provoked - and finally sent the tweet "cheerio" to four tweeters at once. This wasn't because he had to go: at that moment he continued to tweet to someone else on a different subject. The "cheerio" was a remarkably feudal gesture, half-heartedly disguised as chumminess, a hand raised to dismiss the subjects pleading their case from the throne room.

What's striking here is the sense of hierarchy. Moffat and Glinner at the top, dispensing admonishments to proles who get impudent, their friends Moran, Goldacre and Brooker slightly below, offering support and in Moran's case equal admonishment to those that disrespected their friend, and much further down, those members of the Gentry like Spilsbury or IT Crowd Script Editor Andrew Ellard (who sent a sighing tweet of sympathy to Linehan during the Woody Allen row, complaining that the old free speech argument was being used as an excuse to shove people's opinions down their throats, identical to a tweet of Spilsbury's reflecting on Hallor) who each own a smaller estate. Those with TV shows are annoyed. Those who get to script-edit or run the offical magazine on those TV shows are merely exasperated.

The central problem with Twitter is that we the proles are allowed to freely mingle with the first-class passengers. This causes tension when we fail to know our place. If you send a tweet to Graham Linehan or Steven Moffat, it will show up in his @ list hand-in-hand with those from his friends. This results in panic, and bruised egos. It's significant that the main row with Glinner didn't take place between him and Alice Vincent herself - a Huffington Post journalist - but between a group of non-media people who forgot who they were damn well talking to. "Tell your friends to be civil if they expect civility", Glinner ordered @mary_hannon at one point. A twitter cap-doffing button may have to be installed, or a first-class area to keep us from getting too familiar with the celebs.

I received a feudal tweet myself once. Not long after I joined Twitter, my hero Terry Pratchett had written a magnificent piece on Doctor Who for SFX, which The Guardian had crudely turned into "Pratchett attacks 'ludicrous' Doctor Who", and Cheryl Morgan - an interviewer and convention-organiser - had posted a link to The Guardian's piece. Eager to talk about this, I sent her a tweet saying "He didn't attack it! He wrote reasoned and thoughtful article!" and sat back waiting eager to have a conversation about this collision of two of my interests. I received a very stern tweet indeed: "take it up with the Guardian, not the person RTing the tweet." Bemused by this, and wondering if I'd made a social faux pas due to my Asperger's Syndrome and newness to Twitter, I sent back a tweet so bemused it ended up close to a grovelling apology. After sending it, I found myself hoping that Cheryl might sense my nervousness, realise she'd been a little snappy, and withdraw her comments, but her reply was horribly regal: "understood, but twitter is not best forum for that. Too much scope for misunderstanding." I might have pointed out that I knew what I'd joined Twitter for, thanks, and everyone else had been perfectly friendly to me, but let it go.

I can imagine Tom Spilsbury's response - You were a little rude, you shouldn't have used an exclamation mark. I then saw Morgan chastising some poor fellow who'd also assumed that retweeting something means you're interested in it, and therefore in conversing with a human being about it (this guy didn't even use an exclamation mark, but as Morgan angrily told him, she had already had to deal with this once. Her next tweet announced her "New Pet Hate", which was people who bother you about stuff you merely retweeted ). I unfollowed her (without sending any mean messages: I couldn't tell people they are "blocked for stupidity" in a million years). I've no time for the aristocracy. There are more interesting people on Twitter.

To state the obvious for a moment: it goes without saying that hasn't made Graham Linehan's work any less delightful for me, not should it for anyone else, even if they've actually received a feudal tweet from him. But the reason I can't follow Graham on Twitter any more is simply this: uppity is good. Cheeky is good. Knowing your place, aside from in courtrooms, is always bad. I'd rather talk to ordinary people whose idea of rudeness is "Go fuck yourself, you barren old hag" than to media stars whose idea of it is "that piece was so yawn, one step up from a mumsnet post." One of the most telling moments occurred when Glinner, noting that several people objecting to his defence of Coren were interacting with each other, jeered:

Haha. Do all you people with no class hang around together?

Maybe we should, Graham. Twitter belongs to the people, not the sitcom writers, columnists and script editors (let alone the restaurant critics - now there's a candidate for an underclass). Only tyrants boast of their ability to mute and block.

N.B If you think I'm making this up, below are are some links to the tweets or conversations themselves:

https://twitter.com/gilescoren/status/201380632209793025
http://twitter.com/Glinner/statuses/189990343683489793
https://twitter.com/alice_emily/status/201234238471806976
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/201942535202021377
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/201822434498850817
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/201632295524896768
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/201945395675414528
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/201740025023574016
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/201773164685037568
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/201781699728777217
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/201782588778627072
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/201796814180057089
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/202052116544618496
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/202004985326747648
http://twitter.com/Glinner/status/202096382444703745
http://twitter.com/TomSpilsbury/statuses/203784326054297601
http://twitter.com/steven_moffat/status/203484366427529216
http://twitter.com/steven_moffat/status/20348090082093875
http://twitter.com/hallor/status/203480051205943296
http://twitter.com/steven_moffat/status/203478625541033984
http://twitter.com/hallor/status/203470468609605633
https://twitter.com/TomSpilsbury/statuses/67269560235081728
http://www.twylah.com/Glinner/topics/insults
http://www.twylah.com/Glinner/topics/prick
https://twitter.com/ellardent/status/210850085624479744
https://twitter.com/ellardent/status/210858403310993410
https://twitter.com/ellardent/status/189880806808887296
https://twitter.com/ellardent/status/210852616807256065
https://twitter.com/ellardent/status/210854259661619200

(Update September 4th 2013:)
A number of people have wondered why the piece was called "A Look at the Conduct of Steven Moffat and Graham Linehan on Twitter", when so much of the focus is upon Linehan. The answer is that when I started writing this piece, the Moffat/Hallor exchange had lodged in my mind and I underestimated how much worse Linehan's behaviour was, how much more of it there was, and how central it would turn out to be to the argument. I still stand by my criticism of Moffat's reactions to Hallor but I accept that it's unfair for the title of the piece to tar Moffat with the same brush as Linehan.
It also occurs to me that an alternative interpretation of Moffat's decision to leave twitter later that year might be that he realised the problem on some level and was keen to avoid further clashes. While Linehan (and indeed Goldacre and Ellard) have continued to tweet in this way, it seems only fair to acknowledge that Moffat has not, and therefore it would be overkill to leave his name hext to Linehan's in the title.
I should also mention that Tom Spilsbury - who comes in for rather  a lot of ribbing in this and the "Hey fandom" piece - got in touch with me and was very thoughtful in his responses to this piece. He said he regrets what happened, and that ever since he takes to care to think about how he reacts on twitter.

(Update, October 2012:
Neil from cookdandbombd.co.uk subsequently wrote this fine piece:
http://comedychat.co.uk/2012/09/05/comedians-using-their-fans-for-co-ordinated-safety-in-numbers-bullying/
It's on a more pressing concern - the danger of telling your followers to insult those with less influence - mentions Graham Linehan only in passing and not as part of the main topic, but led to numerous unpleasant tweets from Glinner. Jonathan M's comment on this blogpage - scroll below - and the replies from myself and Neil, all of them posted before his piece, shed some light on this.
This piece by Edward Champion is superb as well: http://www.edrants.com/why-the-block-button-encourages-fear-and-threatens-community/
This piece is also worth a look:
http://fingerbuffet.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/the-incredibly-thin-skinned-world-of-graham-linehan/  )