Maybe social media does good things. Maybe it brings people together and gives people some sense of achievement. Maybe it helps to get some hopeful messages out and about and helps inspire people. Maybe it contributes, overall, to the human good. And with social media it doesn’t matter whether you are in Cork or Chicago, whether you are in Dublin or Dubai, people can see what you are thinking.
Sometimes for the good, but often — it seems to me — for the bad.
The latest manifestation of the darkness of social media in Ireland — the sheer negativity that it can be used for — was the abuse suffered by football players representing Ireland internationally. Users of Twitter objected to these players wearing the green shirt on the basis of some of them being black. The level these players were playing at was under-15. So what the brave Twitter users were objecting to was children and you do not get braver than having the courage to fire abuse at children on the basis that you object to the colour of their skin.
So clearly there is a problem with racism in Ireland. I’m not a person of colour so I can’t speak directly of that nor would I presume to but I’m also a part of a society where I can directly see and hear racism in action.
Indeed, the senior Irish football international Adam Idah, who is from Cork, spoke directly about his experience as a black Irishman in the wake of these latest incidents and about the racism he has encountered. The Irish Network against Racism reported very recently that racism in Ireland is “an everyday reality for people from minority groups”. I think anyone with a fair, balanced mind accepts that racism is a reality in Irish society.
What is interesting, though, is what Adam Idah has said about how he has dealt with racism. Idah said that the best thing he did was to come off Twitter. He said he had been off Twitter for two or three months and all his family had done the same. So a successful man, supported by powerful sporting organisations, concluded that, although racism was the problem, removing himself from Twitter was the solution.
Interestingly Corkman Idah plays his football in the UK. Whether in Cork or Norwich it doesn’t matter when it comes to social media. And there it is.
Social media, and in this case directly Twitter, is the problem. The racists and the bigots, who in an Irish context may well be just a spiteful minority, are nothing if not loud. Social media merely amplifies this. Twitter is their megaphone. Twitter is the problem. Racists are rats but they have made Twitter their sewer.
I have no answer to this. I have no solution to the problems of an online culture. But if we at least acknowledge that social media, in this case Twitter, is not some neutral, benign element, then we are making a start, aren’t we? I say this, by the way, as a writer and journalist only very recently trying to engage with this medium.
I’m currently on it but still undecided. I find it hard to see beyond the bleakness of a media form that black people find easier not to engage with than to use. This shiny, new world, this omnipresent forum, can be a pretty tacky thing when you get close up to it. It appears to me to be just a fairly grim place.
It is worth making this clear. I’ve been writing this newspaper column, writing about Ireland, for over twenty three years. I’ve heard some hateful things and listened to some bigoted opinions. But social media is different, isn’t it? Twenty three years ago anyone so distorted with hate they could object to children on the basis of skin colour seethed away in a dark corner. And we were all the better for it. Now they loudly pollute any discussion we might all seek to undertake. And, of course, some people are getting very rich by giving a sound system to the rancid half-thoughts of hateful bigots. Whether that bigot is in Mullingar or Moscow seems beside the point. Racism and bigotry are problems, aren’t they? But social media is one too, is it not? It’s not a medium. It’s a problem.
Joe Horgan tweets at @JoeHorganwriter
