It must be a terrifically slow news day, Bill. What's more depressing is how many people can be sucked into such a slight issue in such a short time.

Lord love us, it's also been on the Channel 4 news. I think the media classes are collectively disappearing up something similarly named.

I want to start taking hostages when I see stuff like that, . I really shouldn't let it get to me, but I can't help it and the red mist descends.
F*** it. I need a whisky. When's Harry Hill on?

But I would have not found out about, and attended a wonderful evening with Fry and his "Tag team partner" Christopher Hitchens tearing a new one to the Catholic Church the other week.

An oasis of insanity in a f***** up world.

I like Stephen Fry,
and I like Twitter,

But which one is better?

There's only one way to find out....................

I Tweet regularly. As one does.

I was highly dismissive of it before I started using it, feeling it was only a means for assorted media ponces to blow smoke up each others' bottoms. Having used it for a while it is great to find my theories confirmed. Facile, vacuous tripe. A solution in search of a problem. A waste of time. Put it any way you like. In less than 140 characters. Then post it so your followers can respond in kind.

Lenny, I was also v sceptical initially but think it is great for following things you like. News, politics, sport etc.
The first rule of Twitter should be: join and say nothing for the first fortnight. Just listen rather than tell me the quotidian shite of your life.
Ignore the media eejits and resist tweeting what you think and it's a fine means of keeping up with stuff.
Mind, I research new media (among other things) so I would say that.

In that time I've seen hundreds of these "Right, I'm leaving the internet forever!" type posts. I've even made a few myself.

Generally they are an indicator that you're spending too much time on the internet and that what occurs online has acquired a disproportionate sense of importance. It's time to get out into the real world again.

Fry can console himself with the knowledge that, were he some faceless nonentity, and not a national treasure, he would have been ridiculed without mercy for such as passive-aggressive response to what was a very innocuous comment.

I feel more sorry for the poor chap currently known as the man who drove Stephen Fry off Twitter, who is now bearing the weight of public disapproval that he doesn't really deserve.

as an extension of this site - with many of the same characters - a veritable pun-fest and a good way to exchange tips, clips, news.

It's also a good way to get a wide range of news and comment from around the world - so subscribe to a variety of Twitter feeds such as New Scientist, New York Times and various UK and global news/business sites

And Bill Bailey aside - can't think of one "sleb" I follow - unless David Hepworth counts, of course.

It literally is a case of you get what you put in - not necessarily in terms of what you "tweet", but in the work you put in to build a network of people that you actually LIKE or at least find interesting and edifying, rather than just following people at random because they're famous, make a lot of noise or follow you.

The tone of the BBC reporting - particularly the celebrity obsession and faddism of it - is imbecilic BUT in there somewhere, whatever you think of Stephen Fry, is a debate that needs to be had about what can/should be said to whom and when via these media. I don't think it's far wrong to say that social networking changes the way we interact with other people as dramatically as the telephone or email did, and so a whole new etiquette needs to be formed. And unlike telephone or email which had to be consciously adopted as a New Thing, Twitter/FB have been much more insidious because most people don't even know what they're really "for" when they sign up.

You can say "just use common sense" or "just have good manners" or "don't be a prick", and obviously that goes a long way, but it doesn't always work when we just don't have the mental co-ordinates to deal with the fact that we might be having more-or-less intimate conversations in front of an audience of thousands or millions. It's easy for most of us pretty-much-literate people to find it ridiculous that people can get into the sort of stupid scrapes that we see all the time on social networking sites, perhaps - after all, I'd say most of the Massive are aware of nuance in the written word simply by virtue of being readers of this fine organ (although saying that despite supposedly knowing how to express myself on the page I've made a complete cock of myself online repeatedly!). But most people, even otherwise intelligent people, just aren't able to stop themselves shooting their metaphorical mouths off - after all chatting shit is essentially "what we do" as a species, it is our USP, we are evolved to make small talk and get into arguments, but we are emphatically NOT evolved to have that small talk and bickering made public and archived foreverandever. So, ludicrous and petty though something like "Fry gets a bit upset" might seem, it is tapping into a fundamental insecurity about how to deal with this medium: an anxiety that pretty much everyone with a internet connection has to some degree.