As the last two weeks were so busy, I wasn’t on social media at all. And I mean at all, I didn’t look at Twitter until Saturday, which was when I discovered about www.thestory.ie’s getting the four ECB letters received. One thing I did find when I wasn’t on the Internet was the silence regarding bad news. Nothing, not a thing, did I hear that made me sad or upset.

I was on Twitter at lunchtime for about half an hour, when someone happily put up pictures of a man being hanged in Iran; they weren’t in the feed of a news organisation but instead were being retweeted by an author I follow. The pictures showed him waving to his daughter as he was about to be hanged, followed by his dead, lank body on a rope. No warning, not hidden, just there when I clicked into twitter. What am I to do with that image, sitting at my desk at lunchtime as I am? I have no effect on Iran, immediate or otherwise. I can’t do anything. All I can do is be sickened to my stomach by an image that gets no immediate context around it, and then try to get on with my day.

I’m obviously out of Twitter now, but it keeps throwing these images at me. There are no gatekeepers on Twitter, thankfully, that is what keeps it relevant. But there are no gatekeepers on Twitter, unfortunately, and it is that which keeps me wary. A modern problem.