IT’S been impossible not to have been drawn into the Seven-Days Wonder that has been the Kings Dolly affair this week, and the last thing anyone wants is another article dragging the issue out, especially with the Turf Club due to put a lid on the matter this weekend. In saying that, it’s been something of an education watching how the issue has been brought to light, and given a life of its own through the medium of social media – and when we say social media, we really mean Twitter.
What’s also been interesting from my standpoint is how few of those who have tackled the subject in print or television media have done so without doing so through the prism of Twitter, looking to leaven any condemnation of the incident with a balancing comment on the extreme opinions expressed on the internet platform. For me, this has been the most enlightening, and at the same time, distorting aspect of the whole sorry saga.
I signed up for a Twitter account an eternity ago it seems, not because I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread – at that time it was a hub for those who worked in the marketing and PR industries, and few outside that bubble could see quite how it would revolutionise online communication. No, the reason I signed up was because someone visionary at Betfair had recognised the scope of the service and wanted to promote the brand via the pundits and presenters at Timeform Radio, which was a thing once. It took me a while to see the value of using Twitter on a personal level, but I now wonder how I managed to survive without it.
It’s a tremendous resource for getting news and views in a format which doesn’t waste time, both in terms of the ingenious 140-character limitation and through the ability to filter content according to taste.
There are very few in the racing industry who don’t rely on Twitter to some degree, and its existence is undoubtedly a boon to all, but it’s not a complete utopia, and it’s important to understand the limitations of the platform and deal with them appropriately. For one thing, there really is such a thing as too much information, and we all need to cull the accounts we follow in order to avoid being swamped by data. It’s too easy to be a glutton, and the problem with digesting every opinion is that the intellectual arteries can get dangerously clogged.
I’ve recently cut back on the number of political accounts I follow, for example, as the nature of propaganda tends not to change from generation to generation, and it’s far too easy to get caught in the crossfire of pointless cant. It’s also far too easy to deal with racing issues by making judgements about those who debate them on Twitter.
There were a lot of absolute opinions expressed online about what happened at Tramore last Friday, and to be frank, most of those opinions, whether held in heartfelt terms or designed purely to inflame, were entirely incidental to the main issue, and best ignored in dealing with that issue. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to deal with secondary assumptions that it is to tackle a complicated and nuanced subject, so too much time has been devoted to putting tweeters straight about jumping to judgement, and not enough simply putting the issue in proper context.
ONLINE OPINIONS
The problem with saying that what appeared to happen at Tramore is unacceptable but then going on to condemn extreme opinions expressed online is that while both stances are absolutely correct, the second is likely to appear a qualification of the first, even if not intended as such. There is a loose parallel here with Donald Trump’s disastrous handling of the Charolttesville riots, where he destroyed any benefit gained by his condemnation of the far right by also looking to attribute blame elsewhere.
I don’t want to labour that point for obvious reasons, but the bottom line is that where there is a scenario which demands censure, that censure must be stated simply and without caveat, or it appears more like appeasement.
It’s also important to understand that while opinions are widely held, they are not universally expressed, and the nature of Twitter, particularly with its character limit, but also with the cloak of anonymity that the internet often confers, is that complex opinions are much less likely to be read, or even expressed, that those which are absolute. Assuming that listening to a wide range of opinion on social media will provide some kind of wisdom-of-crowds balance is likely to be a dispiriting experience.
By all means look to widen your intellectual horizons by taking on many opinions, particularly where they will challenge your own, but it’s not wise to assume that what passes for common wisdom on the internet is rooted in reality. Trying to put right the misonceptions is not just tilting at windmills, but often taking important focus off the simple truth.