Charlie Brooker's Twitter Meltdown | TQS Mag

Followers of Charlie Brooker on Twitter (@charltonbrooker) will have noticed some pretty strange behaviour of late. The Guardian journalist and broadcaster is known for his caustic wit and less than rosy outlook on life but over the last few days he’s taken his dislike of David Cameron (which we share at TQS) to an extreme level with an almost constant outpouring of insults. It all started with this column in which he effectively compared Cameron to Voldemort for several paragraphs before getting to the actual point of his piece, which wasn’t received well by Telegraph journalist Graeme Archer who saw it as symptomatic of the ‘tragedy of the tone of the left’. And so the deluge began:

What followed was pretty hillarious, a series of ‘eye-witness’ accounts of Cameron’s reptillian side as recounted by Brooker’s followers which he retweeted for all to see, some the best included:

I witnessed Cameron slice off his finger whilst preparing vegetables, and it just grew back. No word of a lie. @FrizFrizzle
I heard he once did the dance from “Thriller” without ever having seen the video. @GeordieJohn
If ever he thinks his back-benchers are conspiring against him, he can turn his head a full 180 degrees to check. @betsymartian

However, not everyone agreed his tirade of 44 retweets were hilarious with some followers reacting badly. A few disgruntled people are to be expected with the broadcast of any strong opionion but it was Charlie’s reactions that have prompted upset and ultimately me to write this blog post, take a look for yourselves:

Now I’m not saying anyone in the public eye should pander to their Twitter followers but calling them ‘fools’ and ’100% wrong’, however ironically, is sure to alienate swathes of people. So what effect has his recent meltdown had? A quick scan on Twitter Counter shows he is dropping followers like flies, over the last couple of months Brooker has steadily gained followers at a daily rate of around 200-350, however here’s a graph charting the last few days:

The above shows a decrease of around 200 followers a day which coupled with the steady growth rate (and assuming this remains constant) would in fact suggest he is dropping followers at a rate of 400-650 a day. I doubt he cares how many followers he’s losing but it’s interesting to see how many people have become alienated enough to click the unfollow button.