Last time I looked, my online petition was not generating the support I had expected. You can find it on Facebook and it is entitled ‘Everybody Should Be Sacked or Killed.’ Only 38 people have so far pledged their support for this laudable proposition, which is way short of the number that would enable my bill to be debated in parliament.
The problem, I think, is not the substance of the proposal, but my own technological inadequacies. I do not know how to download an image, a feat which is required if I am to advertise my proposition to the millions of people who use Facebook (worth £50 billion apparently) — so the only people who know that the petition is out there are those few who were Facebook friends of mine in March last year, about 150 decent souls in all. I wonder how many other great ideas have been stymied for the most trivial of reasons, how many luxury ocean-going liners with five swimming pools and after-dinner speeches by Ann Widdecombe have been ruined for a ha’porth of tar.
I had thought my proposal captured the essence of this new democratic medium, sort of summed up the aspirations of the internet-savvy population. An expression of inchoate rage, spite and nihilism directed at whoever the hell you wanted it to be directed at — racists, blacks, politicians, bankers, lawyers, comedians, social workers, mathematicians and carpenters’ wives. For the minority of internet users who do not spend their entire time online watching Ukrainian women servicing farmyard animals, most of the energy seems to be expended on monomaniacal vindictiveness and fury.
There is something about the immediacy of the internet that predisposes people to rage and vengeance, which facilitates splenetic denunciations and demands for peremptory punishment; there is little that is measured, thoughtful or humane out there.
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