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The Church of England has issued a set of what are being called Digital Commandments intended to govern Christian behaviour on social media. The nine commandments include very many wise and kind and sensible things such as “Be Safe”, “Be Respectful”, “Be Honest” and “Take Responsibility” – none of which are, obviously, how it’s done at all. It would kill the whole social media thing stone dead if anyone paid them any attention. Good on them for trying – I don’t expect Aaron Bastani knows which way up to put a chasuble. The real commandments are below.
1. Thou shalt get there first at all costs
If there’s a joke begging to be made, a hot take screaming out to be delivered, an unsourced and inflammatory rumour to be passed on or an unfortunately-worded tweet to be screengrabbed and retweeted, what are you going to do? Stop to consider whether it’s tasteful, decent, proportionate and/or based on anything like reality? HELL NO. Get that sucker up before the next person does and soak up all those sweet retweets.
2. Thou shalt snitch-tag where possible
What profiteth it a man that he seeth his neighbour’s name taken in vain, and he passeth up the opportunity to let his neighbour know all about it? It profiteth him nothing either way, if we’re honest. But it giveth him either a solid lol, a thrill of prurience or a little glow of sanctimony if he catcheth person A slagging off person B and taggethperson B’s handle into his reply, knowing that it will All Kick Off more or less immediately.
3. Thou shalt quote-tweet thy victims
If you disagree with someone on Twitter, it’s not enough simply to reply to them stating your difference, like a person having a civilised conversation. Instead you go for the equivalent of standing up at a restaurant table and bellowing what they said in outrage, then running out onto the street to shout what an idiot they are to passers-by. With a bit of luck – especially if you have 200,000 drooling maniacs following you and your victim has 49 gentle flower-arranging types – their mentions will be dogpiled by neo-Nazis and you can have a good laugh about ruining their day.
Oh wow. Actual wow. So finally we have a rule on quote tweeting. Quote tweeting is fine if the quote tweeter decides that their followers are well behaved.
And yet every single time you quote tweet me, which you do obsessively, I get piled on, so how does that work?
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) July 2, 2018
4. Thou shalt seek offence
Yea, even unto the ninth generation. There are many creative ways to do this. You can make sure that a piece of racist language or an offensive image goes hurtling round the globe as a by-product of your need to show everyone how earnestly you disapprove. You can trawl through the social media history of political enemies in search of drunken or “problematic” posts. You can wilfully extract a single word or phrase from context, take a figure of speech (especially a violent one) literally, deafen yourself to irony and purposely misunderstand jokes. The main thing is to make sure you supply not a shred of imaginative sympathy or benefit of doubt to anyone outside your tribe.
5. Thou shalt humblebrag
It’s not all about making life a misery for others. Social media is also there to inflate your own fragile sense of self-worth by telling your followers how wonderful you are. But not in a boastful way. Much better to make them hate you by coyly retweeting praise. “So this happened…” you might say above a photo of you with an armload of Oscars, but with a blushing emoji to show how incredibly humble and relatable and surprised you are. Or you retweet over-the-top praise from minor celebrities – but with a comment saying you can’t BELIEVE how kind they are to say that. #proud #blessed #humbled.
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