WHEN The Sun newspaper ran cruel and misleading headlines about Liverpool supporters in 1989, it sparked a backlash that lasts to this day – and rightly so.
When I was young, a number of newspapers ran cartoons depicting the Irish as ape-like, violent and stupid. It led to a reaction that ensured that kind of crassness is now beyond the pale.
Social discourse when I was younger was casually full of racism, sexism, homophobia and any number of slurs you might care to mention.
It led to the fightback that was labelled first "political correctness" and then "woke". Loud voices now tell us this has oppressed free speech, but what is it they feel they can no longer say about Irish people, black people, women or gay people?
Do we really want to hear it? Is it better that certain people now think twice before saying crude, bigoted things?
Yes. It is. Surely.
So why does it feel as though things have become worse?
The reaction online to the deaths of five young Irish teenagers was beyond shocking. It was deeply disturbing.
The young men, driving on the wrong side of the road crashed into another vehicle. The family in that car suffered serious injuries. It is a horrific tragedy.
The gardaí have spoken about retraining and the difficulties of dealing with incidents such as this. There has been discussion about dangerous driving being recorded for social media likes. The entire episode is utterly awful.
There has also been discussion that the young men were from Traveller backgrounds. There has been speculation that they were wearing balaclavas. There have been reports that the family in the other car – including a seven-year-old child – were travelling from Dublin to catch a ferry for a wedding in England.
It is heartbreaking.
There are many issues to examine, but one overriding fact remains: four people were seriously injured and five teenagers lost their lives. By any measure, that is a tragedy. Any decent society would recognise that, wouldn't it?
Yet, whatever people's agendas or opinions, social media – which now, unfortunately, drives much of our public conversation – seems capable of abandoning even the most basic standards of decency.
Online, the deaths of those five teenagers were not simply criticised. They were mocked, celebrated and rejoiced in.
"Dragged-up little vermin" read one comment.
“No regrets for the dead scumbags" said another.
There were many more.
Of course, social media accounts can originate anywhere in the world, and some exist for no purpose other than sowing division and hatred. That should always be borne in mind.
But still, how have we reached this point? How have we become not better, but worse?
Across the Irish Sea came another tragedy: the death by suicide of a Cambridge academic following sustained public scrutiny of his academic record and personal achievements.
Whatever anyone thinks about the controversy, whatever questions may have existed about academic standards, and whatever motives some of those pursuing the story may have had, one fact remains.
A man took his own life.
That, surely, is a tragedy by any reasonable standard of human decency.
Yet here too there was an astonishing absence of compassion.
One Oxford-educated journalist wrote after his death: "He was a liar and a fraud who was rightly exposed for what he was."
She then argued that the only person responsible for his death was himself – a remarkably heartless response to any death by suicide.
How did we get here? How did we become this?
Now, I know that most of us are not like that. Most of us would never write those things or share those sentiments.
But the poison spreads nonetheless. We hear it. We read it. It seeps into public discourse until cruelty becomes normalised.
Five teenagers are dead. A man is dead.
Isn't that, on its own, awful enough?
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