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Observations of two disillusioned old-media churnalists

Oct 31, 2009 Comments

What Stephen Fry quitting Twitter reminds us about community management

Something happened today that sparked minor alarm, and major conversation.

One of Stephen Fry’s followers, of which there are very nearly 1,000,0000, casually remarked that sometimes his tweets could be a bit boring.

Stephen Fry replied: “whereas yours are so fascinating I can barely contain my fluids.”

The follower, @brumplum, replied, rather sweetly: “@stephenfry I shall have to put more effort into fluid-extraction! *blushes at the thought of S.F. reading my wibbles*”

Shortly followed by: “My life is complete, @stephenfry has @ replied me, rapidly followed by blocking me. My previous comment clearly hit him hard. Sorry.”

Stephen Fry replied with: “@brumplum You’ve convinced me. I’m obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone.”

Followed by “Think I may have to give up on Twitter. Too much aggression and unkindness around. Pity. Well, it’s been fun.”

To those non-community managers following Stephen Fry, it may have been a fairly unique car crash to watch but for those in the online community field who regularly ‘manage’, ‘curate’, ‘nurture’ or whatever else you want to call it, it was really nothing new.

It was, I believe, something I have often called, ‘the flounce’.

The flounce is something that happens fairly regularly in traditional message board communities. To be considered a true flounce it tends to tick the following boxes:

It is being carried out publicly (i.e. not through private messaging or offline communications)
It is being carried out by an active community member, who tends to have a large following and a fairly lengthy history of membership – it carries no weight otherwise, no-one would notice
It revolves around hurt, personal feelings, rather than big picture disagreements around, say, party politics
It tends to start with a disagreement between a very small number of people, often just two
The popular member (or sometimes a clique of members) declares they are leaving the community
A far larger group than was originally involved wades in, pleads with the flouncer or flouncers to change their mind(s), lists the reasons why a) they shouldn’t go and b) they’re fantastic
The flouncer decides to stay. Or at least says they’ll think about it:

Stephen Fry: “Well maybe I’ll see how I feel in a few days. Very low and depressed at the moment and any drop of meanness makes it so much worse. Sorry.”

When I worked on a large women’s community it was a near constant occurrence. It happened on boards based around all topics, not just the typical flashpoints of parenting, and very rarely did anyone leave. At least for long.

It’s easy to get used to rolling your eyes, using calming strategies, and flashing the red cards when it all gets too much.

It’s easy to see the flouncing as an act in itself. It’s easy to see the flouncer as, well, just that. A flouncer. It’s just a hissy fit, it’s just a flounce.

But an act is rarely independent, it is rarely caused by only one thing.

We don’t act in a simple, binary way. A to B therefore C isn’t really how humans behave. We don’t always act chronologically (I may do something right now, based on a conversation three days ago, in between I’ve done all sorts of other things).

In short, there is often a huge backstory behind every little piece of dialogue.

Seeing someone so intelligent, so well-educated, so nuanced (you could hardly call Fry a one-trick pony), at the age of 52, execute a perfect flounce reminds us that, actually, there can be very serious reasons behind it.

Stephen Fry, as swathes of followers rushed to point out to poor @brumplum, is bipolar. In 1995, while performing in the West End with Rik Mayall, he suffered an infamous nervous breakdown. He disappeared for days leaving a comedy community bracing itself for news of suicide.

It’s fair to say that we can assume nobody within Stephen’s community at the time, would have rolled their eyes. It’s fair to say that we can guess no-one would have termed it something as flippant as a ‘flounce’.

Fast forward to 2009, and yes, as a community manager, I recognise that the events of today had all the hallmarks of a very common community occurrence. Because of Fry’s notoriety, for once, witnesses to it knew of the backstory. They knew that this could be the actions of a deeply unhappy person, with a history of mental illness.

It’s important that all of us in a position of trust and responsibility within any community, but especially one of words, remembers that flounces are very rarely flippant.

By @hollyseddon