There was a wonderful little item on social media this week, which featured on the prime minister Keir Starmer’s timeline. In it, the PM was shown meeting and sharing photographs with people who had been at the annual Pride of Britain awards. Setting aside politics, the photos were genuinely heartwarming and, I felt, sincere. Many of the people suffered from learning difficulties, some were missing limbs, all, it appeared to me were incredibly brave and deserved our love and respect but social media being social media could only be abusive and take the piss. It was revolting.
I am not going to repeat to you the very worst comments, which in itself will give an indication of just how bad they were, but one photo of Starmer with them led various people to ‘joke’ that they were surprised the Cabinet looked that way but the PM himself was quite at home. Let me be blunt about this: they were ripping the piss out of people with learning difficulties and those with major disabilities in order to get a cheap laugh or worse still to make some kind of political point.
Even if the Facebook – and this shit was on Facebook – users were made up, the point is someone made them up. Someone, probably a lot of someones, thought the people at the Pride of Britain awards were fair game. To me, they are the dregs of the earth.
The Trumpian descent of Facebook is one reason I have scaled back my use of it. Quite apart from the overwhelming amount of AI used by the platform, and the algorithms suggesting things I might want to buy and read, Facebook no longer has filters. You can say what you want about anyone these days, no matter how disgusting it is. If it wasn’t for Facebook being one of the few places I can hawk this blog around, I’d dump it tomorrow.
Don’t give me all that ‘free speech’ nonsense. We hear far too much about so called free speech from people who would rather deny us any free speech at all. And if freedom of speech is there to abuse and ridicule the most vulnerable people in the land, is that really why our forefathers fought world wars to maintain it?
Above all, it’s the hate I can’t stand. I know haters have always been there but social media has taken hate to new levels, along with a diminished press which plumbs still nastier depths by the day in order to maintain their plunging circulations.
Taking the piss out of disabled children. Taking the piss out of adults will learning difficulties and life-limited conditions. Is that honestly the best we can do? Never mind be kind. Just be a cunt instead. Because that’s what Mark Zuckerberg is enabling for us all. When you’re showing off about how great your life is, or posting colossal photo dumps of yourself on holiday or taking pictures of your fucking dinner, maybe it’s not the same as laughing at disabled kids, but it’s the same platform. And you and I may just be encouraging them.
