Fergus Finlay: We are not powerless against toxic social media. It's time to act

Then, emboldened by his welcome from Donald Trump, he declared the next day that he intends to be the next president of Ireland. It’s an unspeakable, unthinkable proposition that a man like that would be chosen to represent us. I’ve written here before and elsewhere about how much I believe in the presidency. Above all because it is an office that belongs to each and every one of us.

But it must be occupied by someone who believes in Ireland, who will give his or her all for Ireland, who will seek to represent and embody our values and ideals and history. It can never be occupied by a boastful and vainglorious thug.

I don’t think anyone in Ireland is mad enough to grant him a nomination to run. And if he does somehow secure a nomination, just imagine the campaign that would emerge, fuelled by lies and hate on a social media that is now almost entirely dedicated to those ends.

But if he does succeed in running, the rest of us have an absolute duty to oppose him. Should he be elected in some fashion, he would be expected to take a solemn oath, not only to maintain the Constitution and uphold its laws, but to “dedicate (his) abilities to the service and welfare of the people of Ireland”. I can simply not imagine a hollower moment in our history, if we were to allow that to happen.

I’m hopeful it won’t happen, that as a whole we won’t let it happen. 

As one Irish citizen, I would do everything in my democratic power, with every last ounce of energy and commitment I have, to prevent it from happening. I’d be 100% certain most of us feel that way

Until I saw all that, it wasn’t what I was going to write about this week. But McGregor fits into the theme of the week in any event because of his poisonous influence as a so-called role model. I wanted instead to talk about what everyone else is talking about — the series Adolescence — and perhaps more its meaning and its impact.

Irish Examiner columnist Jennifer Horgan wrote a long and moving piece about the series the other day. What pulled me up short was her description of her own encounter with knife violence, when she was a teacher in London and one of her young students was stabbed. “I was pregnant with my son when our headteacher told us he’d been murdered,” Jennifer wrote. “My baby kicked and thrashed inside me, reacting to my racing heart. I will never forget that sense of meaningless loss — like falling into a bottomless, hopeless chasm.” 

I also have a wise friend called Eoghan Cleary (he and I work together on a voluntary basis for the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre). He is an educator who works with young people, and a passionate expert in the damage that is being done. 

He wrote a long and powerful piece in The Irish Times about what he calls the essential truths at the heart of Adolescence — it’s not about a monster, it’s about “a regular boy (called Jamie) lost in the wilderness of modern masculinity”.

Eoghan does report one heartening discovery about the boys he works with. They followed McGregor’s trial closely after his assault on Nikita Hand, and they came to learn what “the rhetoric of Tate looked like when it was played out in real life and they rejected it”. 

Eoghan writes “McGregor, who they once idolised, now disgusts them and they are starting to see the link between the rhetoric and the impact of it.” 

But Eoghan also writes about the crisis in self-esteem and the influence of highly persuasive misogynists — the Andrew Tates of this world. They have succeeded in spreading a pernicious gospel that says if boys are not getting sexual gratification, it is because women, for their own purposes, are denying it to them. Boys who have learned everything they know about sex from the pornography available at the touch of a button on their smart phones are taught to believe that women who aren’t submissive to them are part of a malign conspiracy against them.

Conor McGregor has almost 11 million followers on what used to be called Twitter. Andrew Tate has almost exactly the same. The owner of X, formerly Twitter, has 220 million followers.

But they are brought to us, delivered to our phones and computers, by companies we all know well. Anyone who has a mobile phone in Ireland, or a computer that operates on broadband, pays one of these companies a monthly fee for the privilege of being able to access McGregor or Tate. They are called internet service providers, and in effect they provide the platform that brings each of the social media platforms to our bedrooms, sitting rooms, and homes.

So most of us in Ireland already have a relationship with either Digiweb, Eir, Sky, Three, Virgin Media, and Vodafone. And there are several others. These are all companies regulated by Irish law. They must remove dangerous content if directed to do so by Coimisiún na Meán, the national regulator. So if a judgment were to be made that a platform like Twitter is dangerous, the companies we all know can be directed to take it down. If we argue for that, we are enemies of free speech. 

But if we acquiesce to the poison of people like Andrew Tate and Conor McGregor, we become complicit in the damage they do. And that’s a dilemma, I guess. 

Misogyny has always been there, it’s always been capable of causing pain. But now it’s almost mainstream, to the point where an entire generation of our children and grandchildren are at risk of being lost

How many more boys will have their minds bent and twisted by this poison, how many more girls will be hurt or destroyed, before we face up to the crisis of online misogyny? If they were standing outside schools trying to corrupt our kids, we’d know what to do. Instead, they’re waiting for our kids to turn on their phones. And we seem to be powerless.

Right at the end of Adolescence, Jamie’s dad goes into his son’s bedroom and tucks Jamie’s teddy bear into the bed his son might never see again. “I’m sorry, son,” he cries, “I should’ve done better.” 

Couldn’t we do better too? Mustn’t we?