@RealDMitchell
#FlagpoleTwitta
The obvious point to make with David Mitchell is that he, Webb, and commisioning editors made the mistake of thinking that being able to memorise some words on a piece of paper and repeat them, sometimes while pretending to do things, meant that was enough to make you destined for greatness in the field of writing, because the words they read happened to be funny. Thusly, a terrible plague was set upon us. Yet that doesn’t tell the whole tale.
David Mitchell rarely engages with others on Twitter, and doesn’t come across as a terrible arsehole on the actual site itself. What he does use his account for, however, is to constantly plug all his articles, videos, and books. That may only be mildly annoying compared to his neighbours in this list, but what it means is that one Twitter feed with almost 900,000 followers is entirely devoted to tweeting the collection of the worst opinions and writing in the world.
Just look at this example. It’s almost invulnerable to criticism because the entire piece reads like a Peter Ustinov anecdote on an old repeat of Parkinson on a TV being played at medium volume four doors down. Where does the actual substance begin? We start with an ‘is a washing machine better than the vote’ hypothetical scenario, which Dave tells us is a stupid question, which doesn’t stop him devoting three paragraphs to talking about it. I’d venture that if you’d hand-wash your clothes for four years to get to vote then you’re a fucking psychopath or very, very thick, but Dave tells us it’s the 'moral’ thing to do.
Then we get onto the criticism of George Osborne, except the criticism centres around not his catastrophic management or dangerous policies which attack the poor, but a semantic problem. There’s a telling quote here:
“Obviously this reminds me of Thatcher but at least she unashamedly presented herself as a tough bastard. She didn’t claim to be making friends but to be fighting her enemies. She was divisive and proud of it. But the way the current Tories are sidling up to the same type of policy, exploiting and exacerbating the same anger and hatred as the mists of their hoodie-hugging rhetoric clear, is loathsome.”
That’s Mitchell in a nutshell, and indeed he pretty much encapsulates the middle\media-class zeitgeist in his “I’m not in any way affected by any of this so let me just pick apart the semantics and minor logical and moral points which don’t really matter to anyone at all.” He’s a celebrity Tom Chivers. The triumph of the march towards total singularity of non-opinion. This is just one article - all the others are the same. It is to 'political’ discussion what Eats, Shoots, and Leaves is to Das Kapital.
That’s the issue though - what he writes isn’t immediately demonstrably false, there’s nothing obvious enough to get some free Daily Mail-style hatred, nothing to laugh at because it’s so lacking in self-awareness, nothing to ironically RT. Most of the accounts on the list can be amusing to follow, and for the limited expense of having them on your timeline, it’s easy for people to cross the 'so bad they’re good’ line. David Mitchell doesn’t do that. He is as awful as you can possibly be whilst remaining utterly tedious.
Sample Tweets
“I’ve published a book today! I got up early to publish it and now it’s all published. I’m a manufacturing success story. #appleofcameronseye”
“Going on This Morning this morning - I think I’m on in about 10 mins - to talk about my memoir. #ThisMorningthismorning”
“If you’re interested in hearing me bang on some more about this, then there’s a tailor-made event, on Thursday 11th: http://www.shaw-theatre.com/index.php?id=134 …”