Polly Vernon
Is anyone else exhausted by how ANGRY everyone is, suddenly?
I’m angry, you’re angry: the rest of the world’s never been so furious – and it is knackering.
A snapshop of my last fortnight in anger: first, I took on that online troll in real life, then, a shop security guard chastised me for putting my wet brolly ‘in the wrong place’ – and kicked it. Then, I got frogmarched to the front of a Post Office queue because there was some uproar over an employee and I was the only one who didn’t mind being served by them, then a barista told me off for ordering coffee with my mouth full, because I’d popped some brownie taster into my gob as he became free, then a woman tutted me because I took ‘her’ mat space in Pilates.
Finally, last week, came a Twitter spat with the London Fire Brigade.
There are few people in the world with whom I wish to spat less. It’s difficult not to just be filled with all-encompassing respect for that lot, isn’t it? And yet… It started when I featured one of their number in Chart Of Lust. He’d tried to save a parrot from a rooftop, the bird told him to ‘fuck off ’, then flew away. A literal angry bird. The problem was, I’d referred to the parrot-rescuer as a ‘fireman’, not a ‘firefighter’, to the outrage of one reader. They’d ‘called out’ my ‘clapped-out sexism’ on Twitter, and dobbed me in to the relevant authorities: aka the London Fire Brigade’s feed, who took an equally dim view of my language (the ‘fireman’ bit, not the ‘fuck off ’ bit).
Reader, things spiralled. I have no problem with calling people whatever they wish. But I do have issues with being wrist-slapped like a naughty child for a mistake. I’m afraid I responded with impertinence. They got righteous. I got churlish. Thirty-six hours of pettiness and point-scoring later: I left Twitter. Again. I suddenly felt bone-tired of being angry.
So. Much. Anger. Always! Everywhere! I know it’s not just me, cos if it were, no one would be getting angry back, or first – but, they are. Forget empathy! Forget winning charm! Anger is now our no.1 go-to response, the all-obliterating blast furnace of feeling into which we just will throw ourselves, given the chance.
The terrible pity of all this anger is, it goes nowhere. The things you want, the ends you pursue, the very reason you got angry in the first place… all of this gets subsumed by anger, and lost. Nothing changes, nothing gets better, and everyone’s blood pressure goes up a notch.