This is the @ireland twitter account.

Every week, it gets ‘curated’ by a different Irish person. It’s a nice theory, but I don’t follow it purely because I like my Twitter feed to be consistent and I don’t like the idea of having to learn about a new person every week.

This week, it’s been taken over by @benjdconroy, who is an intern at the Iona Institute, and apparently the son of Ireland’s favourite bigot – Breda O’Brien.

Everyone is freaking the fuck out. Like, it’s all I’ve seen on Twitter all day.

https://twitter.com/RubyMSomething/status/600064154523729920

 

This is problematic for a number of reasons.

Firstly, everyone is scared that a No Voter knows how to use Twitter.
No, seriously, this is a real issue. The majority of No Voters we have seen on our precious feed so far have mostly included oul wan’s who are so bad at tweeting that I’m not even sure if the accounts are genuine, or the very boring @MFM_Ireland who clearly just see Twitter as another branch of their social media strategy.

But @benjdconroy is a real, legitimate tweeter. He knows how to fav, RT, reply, follow and he has a grasp of what is trending and when to tweet. So herein lies the problem – how can a young, social media-savvy person, oppose marriage equality? How can somebody who is subjected to lovely LGBT BuzzFeed stories on a daily basis, not want equal human rights for every Irish citizen? How can he have had a Twitter account since 2011 and not cried at the story of Tom Bridegroom, or been moved by the video of ‘Same Love’ Weddings at the Grammys?

I don’t have any explanation for these questions. I mean, I could easily write him off as the brainwashed child of BO’B, but that would undermine his beliefs and by doing that, we are not acknowledging the greater problem in Ireland. Ben represents a good portion of our population right now, and just because most of them don’t know how to use the internet doesn’t mean their opinions aren’t going to count on Friday 22nd.

The @ireland account has received a lot of abuse since Ben took it over, and to be honest I have no problem with that, Ben knew what he was getting into.

But I don’t think people should be blaming @darraghdoyle for allowing him to curate. The no side is vastly underrepresented on Twitter, with good reason, so on the whole he’s not going to do much to change the minds of all of us liberal tweet-addicts. Furthermore, he’s being very diplomatic, as far as the political opinions go. If I was in charge of that account the week before the most important referendum Ireland has ever seen, I would genuinely just be trash-talking Breda O’Brien, ripping the piss out of Catholicism and putting up Iona Institute memes.
Darragh is also switching it up on Wednesday, when @gettheboat2vote will be taking over. I cried reading their tweets last week so I’m looking forward to an emosh couple of days.

On the whole, everyone needs to just sit down.

 

The real danger to marriage equality is not the No vote. It is not even those who are indifferent. The danger is the Yes voters who have spent weeks ardently campaigning on Twitter, sharing Ursula Halligan’s articles, RT-ing Panti Bliss and making snide comments about the Iona Institute. The danger is that on Friday 22nd, they will think the hard work has been done, and won’t bother voting at all because of the trek home, or they don’t have time to go before/after work. This is why hearing the No side on Twitter is so important – to remind these people that the fight is not won on the internet – you must go out and vote.

Everyone on Twitter is lovely and we all have our Twibbons to show we’re going to vote yes and that’s all fabulous, but just because we vehemently hate the no side and despise seeing them on our feed, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If #GE2015 has taught us anything its that the internet is shit at actually voting. Or, it’s very good at lying. So keeping in touch with the no side is essential to ensuring that those who think a yes vote is a ‘sure thing’, because of the internet, actually get out and vote and change the world. x o x o