BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN

Pray tell, why do you hate so?

The sneering nastiness of the tw*ts on social media is something to behold. It is understandable how those handed a rough deal in life – they could be poor, sick, or born with an eye on the end of their nose – can become acrimonious. Yet the bulk of the social media nasties tend to be middle class bile-bathers, hardly salt of the earth types.

Perhaps it is too simplistic to paint them all as lefties and Scots gnats? Perhaps it is mere coincidence that those of a red hue so dominate the bitterness list?

Whether with Brexit, a General Election or Coronavirus, the bile trolls carry on with their spouting from dawn to way beyond dusk, as if there are people out there who hang on their every word of projection:

If these nasty people were road rage horn blarers then the obvious thing would be to blow them a kiss and drive away. Alas, any reaction towards them online results in a meaningless spat where they will use “give me one example” or some other age-old trick from Madsen Pirie’s How To Win Every Argument. They know full well that, for the purpose, a tweet is as appropriate a vehicle as a toboggan in a desert.

Where were these nasty people before the Internet was invented?

The green ink brigade were notorious crackpots who wrote letters to the editors of newspapers, to politicians or to celebrities, highlighting important words and phrases by using different-coloured (typically green) ink. These Pooters of Notes have now taken to social media like helmeted hornbills with their warty faces, dangly wattles and maniacal cackles. There can be no other logical explanation. Who else has the time?

The key device the green inkers lacked was a virtual recruiting sergeant. The Web has emboldened the bitterati – unions, groups and societies suddenly seem relevant to these attic dwellers when they are fronted by a slick website and emotion-sparking video – they even hold their own festivals, which back in the day PIE didn’t dare try. They’re out in the open nowadays, the outliers. There are plenty of Year Zero gullible recruits available thanks to university brain washings by Leninist and Trotskyite professors who really hate imperialist Britain where their ideas fail to mesh and the electorate hands their anoraked heroes humiliating drubbings.

I am reminded of the tale of the nasty barber who thought he was so very clever. The barber would parade a certain street urchin in front of his customers to amuse them. The barber would tell them how “thick” and “dim” the young lad was, proceeding to demonstrate the stupidity of the lad by offering him some coins in one hand and a more valuable note in the other. Each time the lad took the coins with lesser value. How that barber cackled. How his customers ridiculed the poor street urchin.

So too the Bitterati think they are so very clever. They mock those they consider their inferiors as they know so much better than them of course. They treat those who won the EU Referendum and the last few elections like that “thick” street urchin. How they cackle! How daily they spit bile!

A tip: to keep on winning, the “thick” depend on the continuing cackling of the “clever” ones.

If the street urchin even once took the note then his winnings would have immediately dried up.

Dominic Wightman is Editor of Country Squire Magazine.