Twitter

Have you heard? Do you know? Are you, as they say, ‘in the loop’? When the Mail on Sunday said a ‘sensational affair’ between ‘high profile figures’ close to Cameron had ‘rocked’ No. 10, did you have the faintest idea what it was talking about? I did, but then I’m a journalist. Friends in the lobby filled me in on a story which had been doing the rounds for months. I even know which law stopped the Mail on Sunday  following the basics of journalism and giving its readers the ‘whos’, ‘whats’, ‘whens’, ‘whys’ and ‘hows’. (Although with most affairs the ‘whys’ are self-evident.

We've had a lot of horrible news this week, and inevitably that means a lot of tragedy tweeting. You know the sort of thing: a terror attack or a natural disaster happens, and everybody hops on the internet to share their reactions and emote ad nauseam. There's not much point railing against this. Twitter is here to stay. But please — just so we don't all go mad — can we lay down some basic DO NOT rules for tweeting in the wake of an appalling major news story? Below are the first eight that spring to mind, but please do add more... 1. Do not take to Twitter to say: 'There aren't words ... Just pray4victims'. If you don't have words to say, then shut up. If you want to pray, just pray. Don't bloody well tell everyone else to. It's obnoxious. 2.

Members of the World’s Most Rational and Peaceable Religion © have been going berserk in the lovely Bangladeshi town of Cox’s Bazar. Some bloke put a photo of a burned Koran on his Facebook page and the Muslims have been rioting, taking out their infantile fury on the minority Buddhist population. Setting them on fire and stuff. Usually Buddhists don’t need any help setting themselves on fire, but that’s another story. As social networking sites establish themselves in third world countries full of furious mentals, this sort of thing is going to happen more and more often, isn’t it? The end of the world will come not with a bang or a whimper, but with a tweet.

It’s time to panic. I read at the weekend that sophisticated hackers have burrowed their way into no less than 250,000 Twitter accounts. What shall we do? Henceforth, when we read that Stephen Fry has just eaten a sandwich, we cannot be absolutely certain that it is the real Stephen Fry who has eaten the sandwich or a shadowy interloper masquerading as Stephen Fry. Or Joey Barton, when he tells us that he wants to stamp on someone’s throat – well, it might not be Joey at all. Fascinating and incisive Tweets about matters of the day from non-celebrities – Camron u r a f****** joke lol #shinyfacedrichboy – will suddenly lose their power to persuade when we cannot be absolutely certain as to their authenticity.

Rod Liddle asks a question of the kind one frequently sees raised by media types: [W]hy is [Lord McAlpine] not suing Twitter itself? It is not Philip Schofield who the peer is suing, but ITV. Surely, likewise, Twitter needs to take some responsibility for its output? If, unlike broadcasters, it has no legal responsibility for what is put out through its witless conduit, then surely there is less of a responsibility on the people who use it, too? On the face of it this seems a reasonable question. But it doesn't take long to appreciate that it really isn't and that, though doubtless well-intentioned, it doesn't make a heap of sense. That is, it misunderstands both Twitter and the nature of the web. ITV employs Philip Schofield and is responsible for the programmes it chooses to broadcast.

The saying goes that the only silver lining at the end of a political career is the chance to read your own obituary without actually dying. For Giles Coren, the speculation that he had 'quit Twitter' was the twenty first century equivalent. It was not all good news though. After a characteristically bad tempered exchange with a rival critic, Coren's account promptly disappeared for twenty-four hours. The obvious speculation that he had stormed off in one of his signature rages quickly brewed. His last words seemed to be: ‘F**k off Marina. It's hurtful and bitchy and pompous. When I want career advice from you I'll f**king ask for it.’ Not bad for a epitaph.

The self-styled enfant terrible of the new radical left, Ms Laurie Penny, has taken her one-woman revolution to the heart of the establishment. Yesterday, she caused quite the ruckus at the Sunday Times Education Festival, hosted at Wellington College on a panel with David Starkey. As well as being banned from the speakers dinner at the behest of the Sunday Times, Penny later alerted her Twitter followers to the fact that 'violent old thug' David Starkey had 'attacked' her 'on stage'. 'That's what racists do when you call them out on their bigotry' she Tweeted. 'Bit shaken but I'll be ok.