There is a lot of complaint about on the internet - inordinate amounts of whining and moaning about often very trivial issues. I'm sure that I'm guilty of this now and then, though I do try to dress things up as critique, rather than just belly-aching. 

Before everything went online, moaning was generally restricted to pubs, backyard fences and letters to the editor. Even then a certain degree of restraint was needed because gripes delivered face-to-face were delivered with personal responsibility attached. There was none of the sine nomine that characterises so much of the poisonous commentary abounding on social media.

This may account for the manner in which people are so easily attacked for such minor offences. If you say something that gives offence then you are accountable and should expect a response - a measured, reasonable response. What happens usually is a personal attack in which matters are globalised and revenge is meted out on the spot.

I was reading an essay by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and came across the following paragraph on this very topic, though in her case it concerned a specific incident. There is no way I could have put it better.

"There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness.....people whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature - the messy stories of our humanity - but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy."

Amen sister.