The Echo Chamber

by John Boyne

For Chris Meyler ‘Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.’ UMBERTO ECO

‘I’m educating strangers on how they can live better lives. And making sure that those with the wrong opinions are held to account.’

His giving nature. His empathy. His indestructible conviction in his own moral superiority. ‘I don’t know why they always give out honours to politicians and movie stars,’ she said. ‘It’s people like you who are the real heroes.

‘What I mean is that I want to be an influencer.’ ‘But this is how you influence people. By gaining as many followers as possible and making them believe in you, even if you have no knowledge or training in your particular subject. That’s how Jesus did it, after all. And look at Christianity. It’s huge.’

‘People that are, you know, constantly alert to every injustice in society, every perceived slight, and who are just desperate to let you know when they’ve found one. They seek them out with all the urgency of truffling pigs.’

The wokesters

‘Was he not religious?’ ‘Men of science rarely are. The two are contradictory.’

speaking as a mother, I can’t help but feel concerned about what goes on when my children are out of the house. One reads so much in the papers about ISIS and child brides and boys running off to fight whoever they’re fighting in Syria, so you’ll understand if I worry when one of my own starts quoting the Bible. We don’t really do God in this house, you see. We never have. Sometimes, at Christmas, George lets Him in for a few minutes before we eat but I always usher Him back out on to the street afterwards. God, I mean. Not George. Anyway,’ she

do,’ he said. ‘I think it’s idiotic and it feels like the obsession of narcissistic morons with far too much time on their hands, but I accept that the culture exists in the world. Just like National Socialism did in the thirties. And McCarthyism in the fifties.’ ‘Please don’t say anything like that on social media, George. Those are both very powerful lobbies.’ ‘Not the Nazis. They got defeated.’ ‘Well, they’re back. And, this time, they’ve all got Twitter accounts.’

Social media is not reality, you know. It’s a mirage.’

The Black Lives Matter movement is not suggesting for a moment that their lives are of more intrinsic value than anyone else’s. It is pointing out that, historically, black lives have not mattered to so many people around the world.’

‘Saying “All Lives Matter” is like going to a cancer benefit and storming the stage to declare that Alzheimer’s Matters. No one is suggesting otherwise!

It’s intentionally taking away from the fact that black people have suffered extraordinary hardship throughout history, from slavery in the States to the Stolen Generation in Australia to the Windrush scandal here in England. Black Lives Matter is saying to people “Stop killing us for no reason”; All Lives Matter is pretending that this doesn’t happen. It’s a nefarious attempt to stall any conversation about systemic racism. Remember,

‘I just realized that I’d prefer not to be part of the social media world any more,’ he explained. ‘From now on, I simply want to enjoy my life instead of constantly documenting it. To exist in the moment and allow my memories to live up here’ – he tapped the place where his brain might have been in a more forgiving biosphere – ‘instead of in one of these.’

‘I’ve become free,’ he said. ‘I’ve reclaimed my privacy. Social media is over anyway. It’s so last year. The fact is, when you sign up for an account and accept the terms and conditions, there should also be a warning attached: And this will make you miserable. Actually, you should tweet that, that’s some solid wisdom there.’

I blame Steve Jobs. And that Zuckerberg fellow. All those clever little psychopaths who couldn’t get laid in high school but make up for their sexual inadequacy by inventing technology that destroys humanity. They’re the Oppenheimers of the twenty-first century.’