Don’t be seduced by titillating titles, warns Matt Forde
I’ve just had an email from Tim Farron. The subject line read: ‘Did you see what Nigel Farage said?’ Given the titillating nature of the title, what I read inside was very disappointing. Shock horror, Nigel Farage said something silly about immigration. I thought it was going to be something unexpected. The tone of that headline-based email is a sign of things to come in this election. The hourly hysteria whipped up by all parties to create Twitter storms is going to become exhausting. In an age where social media has done so much to open up politics in a good way, from following funny members of parliament to helping overthrow repressive regimes abroad, what we are now experiencing is the flipside to the phenomenon: political parties shamelessly pandering to the online mob in order to gain some slight advantage.
Those sorts of headlines are described as ‘clickbait’ – things that make you immediately open a link. They’re used more on Twitter by companies to get you to a page that will have an advert somewhere on it. Classic clickbait headlines are things like, ‘A man on a bus was being rude to an old lady. What this young girl did next was jaw-dropping’. I’ve clicked on thousands of links like that. Occasionally there’s a good one but mostly they’re tedious videos and often there’s some form of advertising involved. Of course it’s sensible for parties to use online techniques but it will be weird if parties start communicating like hormonal teenagers on Facebook: ‘“O.M.GEEEE Did you see what Ed Balls just said? I’m still recovering. ROFL”, is what one Conservative insider said when asked for a reaction to today’s growth forecasts. Back to you in the studio’.
It’s not just the slightly immature sound of it, it’s also the desire for hype and anger that should concern us all. Social media has become something completely different to what it was 10 years ago. Originally a way to stay in touch it has now become a campaigning platform and a way for people to wear their anger with pride. Many of us have deleted our Facebook accounts. One of the reasons I did was because I was tired of people continually moaning about politics on there. I watch BBC Parliament all day, I don’t need any more of it in my life. Unless of course I’d found a really good Tony Blair clip on YouTube, in which case sharing it was fine. It was everyone else’s politics that was the problem. Continual anger, though, becomes unattractive and if political parties all start wailing on Twitter every day they’re not going to attract people, they’re going to put them off.
There’s a logic to getting people angry but the after-effects are ugly. In the short term you give people a burning desire to change things – to abolish the bedroom tax, for instance. No bad thing. But in the medium- and long-term you can’t sustain it and people turn on you. Whenever I end up in a debate, discussion, argument or brawl, my primary aim is to make the person I’m talking to, or rowing with, less angry. I never think, ‘I need to win this argument so I’m going to make that neutral guy over there absolutely livid. That should calm everything down.’ If we’re not careful our political discourse is going to sink to the level of the pub fight with political parties effectively walking up to people and going, ‘Hello mate, did you hear what Vince Cable said about your mum?’ So, before it all kicks off, maybe we should tell our politicians to calm down – it’s just not worth it.
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Matt Forde is a stand-up comedian and talkSPORT presenter. He used to work for the Labour party
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