Grifters indeed! Can we have a lift Joe?

[ThePoshUns]

H&M asked if they could have a lift home on AF1 after HMQs funeral.
Environmentally friendly sure, but makes them look grabby and entitled again. Makes for a good story though.

If you are to hold him accountable for what his followers write under their tweets, do you also hold Kate and William or Charles and Camilla accountable for the severe abuse, including racist attacks, that Meghan and her kids receive under the twitter handles of the royal family?

No, I hold the abusive posters responsible for their own abuse actually. And they are horrific on both sides. The dark side of social media in full display.

But I also note that there’s some responsibility for the content you encourage on a platform you maintain. Kensington Palace and the Royal Family accounts don’t to my knowledge post digs at the Sussexes as Omid does. And they actually hired staff members specifically to delete abusive comments and issued a policy to try and control the toxicity. Omid encourages it.

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/04/royal-family-issues-new-social-media-guidelines-to-deter-trolls

So a person with over 100000 followers says - kids will be kids with a picture of a child well being a child. Awful people say mean things about said child not unlike several things people said on this very forum. Because people were being so mean he deleted the tweet and so those comments can now also disappear. And then said to someone be careful about what you say because people can be exercised if you say things like that (a journalist tweeted “4-year-olds are gonna 4-year-old” in response to W&C (most likely comms) tweeting “We all had an incredible time, especially Louis… 👀“)

Once you tweet something - you have no control over the replies to your tweet. You can block individual users but that person and their vile tweet will be blocked to you but still visible to everyone else. You also cannot respond to hundreds of people at a time. If the engagement is overwhelmingly negative as many of you have reported then he was absolutely right to delete it and warn others.

I do not like that tweet personally because again it feeds into the narrative of creating characters for the children to play and am glad he’s deleted it.

I’ve looked at the rest of his feed and honestly the rest of the comments to Wales tweets are overwhelmingly positive. Read into that what you want.

From your link:

The royal family’s website warns that the palaces reserve the right to “hide or delete” comments, “as well as block users who do not follow these guidelines”.

Abusive comments about Meghan continue to appear on the royal accounts.
Can we assume from that that such comments are not only welcome, but encouraged, since they are not deleted?

Of course not.

I sometimes read Omid's tweets, and can say I have never seen him encourage abusive comments. He tends not to follow the party line that some Richard Eden does, and will tweet about, for instance the King of the Netherlands apologising for slavery etc, subjects not covered by other royal commentators.

And he is clearly a supporter of the Sussexes. That does not mean he encourages toxic comments.

I’ve looked at the rest of his feed and honestly the rest of the comments to Wales tweets are overwhelmingly positive. Read into that what you want.

if you look at his feed, the vast majority of his recent tweets about the Wales are simply retweets of other outlet’s stories (as I said, he’s not looking like a royal reporter these days) and they don’t tend to get much engagement on his feed. If you scroll back to tweets he himself has written about them, it’s a quite different story.

@skullbabe

This thread seems to go in all sorts of directions, and I know you enjoy her, so allow me to make a slight segue and beg, no demand, that you read Marina Hyde's latest on Dan Wootton.

Behold Wootton, a sideboard made of ham, with efit eyes, dropping quotable quotes so fast there was no way you could possibly digest the last one before the next one was being gnashed out through his veneers. I want to say it was like watching a washing machine play King Lear, but I think it’s somehow even more ludicrous to say it was like watching Dan Wootton play sincere.

Kensington Palace and the Royal Family accounts don’t to my knowledge post digs at the Sussexes as Omid does

I’ve just scrolled his feed back to January - he wrote an article about Kate’s Early Years work not too dissimilar to critical articles around that time in February and an article about H&M being evicted and he called Charles cruel. That’s it and he’s a prolific poster. It seems he saves his digs mostly for the media .

"a sideboard made of ham"?
I don't like the man, but it's just so lazy to attack someone on the basis of their appearance rather than their actions.
I really hate that. It puts me off writers.

This is my favourite bit:

Over the past few years I have grown professionally and personally,” continued this … victim statement, is it? “And I have found the meaning of true love.” Oh man.

Amazing that the serial tormentor of so many women in the public eye should attempt to make this a hymn to personal growth. I don’t think – how to put this carefully? – I don’t think that line is going to hold, sir.

All in all, the spectacle of Dan Wootton begging for nuance and empathy is the heat death of irony. The two crucial things about people like Dan is that they are, without exception, monstrous hypocrites – and they also reduce the world. Their entire business is making human experience smaller. There are about six or seven basic story templates into which they believe all other people’s lives must be squeezed, whether or not they want them to be. So to find the high priest of the reductive suddenly asking for an acknowledgment of complexity feels a little much.

That's a more illuminating extract, @MrsMaxDeWinter . The last sentence particularly apposite.

I do love her - what a turn of phrase she has. Good lord! I’m sure that no one would object to people hoping that he gets the very same critical and incisive hearing and reporting that he is well known for. Would only be fair.

"Ham" in this context means theatrical acting, or hamming it up.

It is, in typical Marina style, a metaphor that relies on a play on words.

She continues the theatrical allusion by, in the same line, imagining a washing machine performing King Lear. King Lear was specifically chosen over, say Hamlet or Macbeth, to rhyme with "sincere".

The whole thing is about Dan Wootton's histrionic, theatrical, and over dramatic monologue. You probably don't read a lot of Marina, but word play is one of her things.

Right. I go for the Michelle Obama approach - when they go low, we go high.
I wouldn't stoop to the level of some of these commentators. I think we all know and understand the "sideboard" metaphor.
I think she should attack his behaviour, not his appearance because that's just going low.

I’m sure that no one would object to people hoping that he gets the very same critical and incisive hearing and reporting that he is well known for. Would only be fair.

On this point, we are entirely in agreement 😀

I definitely didn't read it that way, in part because I have never known Marina to comment on appearance in the way you imply.

ham2
noun
noun: ham; plural noun: hams; noun: radio ham; plural noun: radio hams

1. 1.
2. an excessively theatrical actor.
3. "ham actors"

• excessively theatrical acting.

verbINFORMAL verb: ham; 3rd person present: hams; past tense: hammed; past participle: hammed; gerund or present participle: hamming

1. overact.
2. "she hammed it up for the cameras"

Yes. Thank you. I do know what "ham" means.
Please don't patronise me by referring to a dictionary. I am confident enough in my literacy levels.

Even in that context though “sideboard” has to be read as referring to Dan Wooton though?

I don't know, @Serenster . Maybe we ought to look up the dictionary definition. Just to be sure.

😀

"Sideboard of ham" goes with a "washing machine" reciting King Lear ...

You really are making far too much out of this.

But you said again she was making it in reference to his appearance. She was not.

In your opinion.
I really don't have time for the likes of DW. I saw him on that breakfast show and thought his opinions were toxic. I don't think people like that should be allowed to be abusive and we've got a whole level of hypocrisy emerging about his behaviour which is repellant.
There's enough to slate him on. I don't care what he looks like. He could be a young Paul Newman and gym fit, it would be the same.

Well, I only read what was posted above and it seemed to me to be a judgement based on appearance. If others interpret it differently, that's fine. I don't think anyone need to tell others on here what a dictionary definition of "ham" is.

Dan Wooton is a fairly solidly built man. He’s being likened to a sideboard and a washing machine. People are able to think that’s unnecessary.

if you look at his feed, the vast majority of his recent tweets about the Wales are simply retweets of other outlet’s stories (as I said, he’s not looking like a royal reporter these days) and they don’t tend to get much engagement on his feed.

There is a tweet in March that explains why that might be……

But enough about Omid

@Iwantcakeeveryday

I am moving from baffled amusement to amused bafflement over this utterly surreal exchange. On a more positive note, it has provided me with my cue to step back from this thread before things are hammed up any further!

See you on the next thread!