Cancelled writer John’s Boyne-cing back after young adult fiction novel plunged him into an epic social media storm
CANCEL culture is around long enough by now for the world to have had its reckoning with it.
This makes it all the harder to understand how political, media and other organisations continue to be led by explosions of misdirected rage on social media.
There’s an expectation that once a person has been cancelled online, organisations must simply act out the wishes of the mob, and often do.
The intentions and lifetime’s worth of a person no longer matters; their fate comes down to how words expressed in anger or error or in the past are received and interpreted by online crowds who mistake their outrage for activism.
The mob’s rage also threatens anyone who dares to harbour those they’ve sentenced to cancellation, with conviction met through volume of abuse alone.
Literally no one has been brought back from cancellation to tell the tale, though writer John Boyne comes close.
Two years ago, Boyne’s young adult fiction novel ‘My Brother’s Name is Jessica’ plunged him into an epic social media storm.
Online commenters railed against him writing about a trans character since he himself isn’t transexual.
John also isn’t a Victorian governess or a Russian Tsar, two figures in previous books that his tweeting haters had let slide.
He was lambasted for “deadnaming” a character in the title, despite the figure being entirely fictional.
Amid the hurricane of tweets and threats, it was clear the attackers hadn’t even read the book.
Their demands ranged from ordering publishers not to hire Boyne again, to media outlets not to have him on, to hoping that various terrible things happened to the Dublin writer resulting in his grisly death.
CANCEL CULTURE MOBS
One person launched over 1,000 messages of bile at him. The mob tried to have him cancelled.
Boyne’s intentions, to use his enormous popularity as an author to tell the story of a person transitioning and educate young people about such matters, were ignored.
The trolls grabbed his words, twisted them and ranted. The celebrated best-selling gay writer was falsely accused of transphobia based on evidence that actually pointed to the contrary.
His is a perfect case study of logic vanishing rapidly, of people joining the keyboard pitchforks march purely to declare their virtues through bashing a stranger. The author faced a very real threat of being destroyed.
It’s remarkable then that Boyne is back so quickly and with a new novel that slays cancel culture, online mobs and ultimately, our own mind-diminishing obsession with our phones and devices.
‘The Echo Chamber’ is a brave riposte and it’s also a very funny novel. The story focuses on a week in the life of George Cleverley, a liberal 60-year-old BBC presenter and his phone-addicted family.
His wife, Beverley Cleverley, is a novelist who has long given up writing to have her romantic novels ghost-written.
They have three troubled children, damaged by the rise of social media platforms that threaten to engulf each of them in increasingly bizarre and hilarious ways.
George’s good intentions lead to wayward tweets that stir the trolls, and in between gags, his statements against hyper-wokeness and the right-wing who denigrate wokeness, sound like philosophical essays for our time.
POWER OF TROLLING
Such is the power of trolling, most especially in the tiny esoteric world of Twitter, John Boyne’s fans will find themselves worrying for the man as his novel savagely tears into areas most dare not even brush against.
When George unintentionally “deadnames” a person whom he didn’t recognise at first after their transition, he asks in dismay why didn’t they just explain their situation to him, since they’d known each other years?
In another scene that would relate to most of us, Cleverley bemoans how difficult it is to keep up with the ever-changing rules about pronouns and descriptions of minority groups.
Rules that are set by mood-swings on social media that in turn, punish those who breach made-up directives.
Boyne swims in dangerous waters, strengthened by the scars of his online maelstrom, and although this tension is relieved by brilliant moments of comedy, it doesn’t take away from the writer’s bravery in taking it all on.
Nearly 300 years ago, Jonathan Swift wrote that “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own”.
Boyne’s funny novel is not just about human cruelty and how social media firms have grown rich off the troves of data created by society-damaging Twitter-quakes, it’s about us.
How have we let ourselves be enslaved by six ounces of metal out of Silicon Valley?
How have we hardly noticed that the algorithms and data-harvesting apps designed to hook us bring out the worst in people?
Ultimately, Boyne’s book contains a message of hope amid the flames of farce.
Throughout, George Cleverley’s family vaguely remember a time when their attention was on each other and not on their phones and the online versions of themselves.
The story of the author returning from a storm that threatened to end him, with a book poking fun at that very chaos, is the central message of optimism here.
Namely, that the mob who tried to cancel John Boyne in 2019 failed. Their chamber of danger echoes still but we should never, ever let them win.
MICHEAL'S DIARY
Dear diary,
Tis nearly the Golfgate anniversary, that infamous date with destiny when Irish politics crashed into a George Foreman grill, Phil Hogan’s golf buggy and a plate of spuds piled up the height of a judge.
It was a rough week for Fianna Fáil that ended up savaging through Ministers for Agriculture like Big Phil at a dessert trolley.
The big excuse to justify the hooley was a partition running through the room. It was the only way to convince the Fine Gaelers to go — they love it when things are partitioned.
And so we have Merriongate to mark the one year anniversary. Leo rocking up to the 50-capacity bash, air high-fiving Katherine Zappone and pretending neither of them knew anything about the UN gig Coveney cooked up for her.
They tried to slip it by me, diary. But I was having none of it. Across the Cabinet table I looked Coveney directly in the shoe and told him in no uncertain terms I was fierce annoyed.
Then I approved the Zapponyism gig, climbed down off Leo’s lap and had a little cry in my office.
In fairness to Leo, he went on Six One and said sorry for the whole Merrion thing. ‘Sorry it was all Fáilte Ireland’s fault’, I mean. Or ‘Faulty Ireland’ as he’s calling it now.
Did you know they sponsor the Horse Show, diary? Though it’s not allowed this year. Merriongate is like if Leo basically showed up at the banned horse show anyway, ran right through the Puissance Wall, then insisted on Six One News that he rode a clear round.
Then the Attorney General would come out afterwards with updated rules that horse shows are actually allowed all along, with live music and as many donkeys as you liked as guests, so long as they promised not to mingle, or lobby for UN gigs with expenses.
And so, Leo survives again — and there hasn’t been a leak, sorry, a peep, out of the rest of them all week.
Mise le meas, Micheál.
CLIMATE REPORT'S NO REAL SURPRISE
THE UN’s International Panel on Climate Change report is depressing for its lack of surprise.
The mock-shock findings show human activity has wrecked our climate and the consequences will be felt with more rolling natural disasters happening far sooner and with greater intensity than expected.
Some of the effects are irreversible, such as rising sea levels, but others, such as soaring temperatures rendering parts of Europe uninhabitable within 30 years, are not.
The problem is that when world leaders gather in Glasgow in November for COP26 to draw up plans to tackle the climate crises, deja vu will set in.
Regimes that sign up to take action will renege on the promises soon after, just as they’ve always done. Ireland, despite its stable democracy and broad agreement on climate issues, has not honoured its previous commitments to reduce emissions and grow more trees.
Other countries saw leaders scrap their pledges to win support of their extreme bases such as Trump’s America or Bolsonaro’s Brazil.
Russia’s arctic circle is on fire every summer yet its society remains fixated on its oil resources.
China once sorted its huge air pollution problems in cities yet now it opens a new coal-fired power plant every week.
Our climate crisis is now so huge, the actions required are very specific and urgent.
Younger generations tell us hope is not lost, yet when you live on an island that’s filling itself with data centres that require impossible future commitments on electricity and often pull down forestry to build them, it’s hard to believe the changes we make in our own lives will make any difference at all.
CASH-IN COWELL SHOULD WALK ON
A FEW weeks ago, the world could breathe a sigh of relief that The X Factor was dead forever.
The trashy talent show has a problematic legacy now, with old stars including Jedward and Matt Cardle describing a dark atmosphere behind the scenes.
Former contestants say they felt exploited by the show and bullied by the broader media and public.
Simon Cowell made millions from The X Factor in its late 2000s heyday. But despite all the criticism, he’s coming back with a similar new ITV series.
‘Walk the Line’ will be a talent show with judges that offers contestants the chance to win almost €700,000.
It’s basically X Factor but with money for the winner. The champions of X Facto were never guaranteed riches and many of them flopped afterwards, being left contracted to perform on dismal X Factor tours with no sign of the profits they dreamed of. One Direction was the only hit act to achieve global fame and fortune and most of them have spoken about the damage the success train wrought on their lives.
The X Factor was of its time, a vulgar show that rewarded celebrity appeal over talent and that was more interested in manufacturing inane mainstream acts over artistic endeavour.
It was basically about premium phonelines and creating a stir regardless of the psychological cost to its participants.
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Jedward describe feeling bullied by the broad reaction to their tuneless performances.
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Deservedly, that series is now in the bin. ITV should consider adding to it the proposal for Cowell’s next project.
Also, calling it Walk the Line is an insult to the memory of the brilliant, talented Johnny Cash.
