On the day SA’s minister of finance was VAT shamed into looking for other ways to fill the country’s dwindling coffers, the London Marathon told Elon Musk, the US’s mister take-a-chance, that they would no longer stand for the fat shaming that is hosted on his social media site.
The London Marathon will no longer post on X, the cesspit formerly known as Twitter, because of the abuse and vitriol on Musk’s $44bn folly, particularly the “body shaming that has been directed at the Scottish distance runner Eilish McColgan in recent months”, according to race director Hugh Brasher.
“I think it’s abhorrent the abuse that she’s had. And I think people just have to look at themselves as to why on earth they are doing that.
“I think that there are some social media channels that are particularly vitriolic and are descending into a gutter. As a result of that, London Marathon Events has actually come off one of those channels,” said Brasher.
“It’s as a result of where we believe that channel has descended to. Of just looking at how that channel, the vitriol, the level of it … it was ceasing to be a rational conversation. It was ceasing to be a positive place to be,” said Brasher, whose father, Chris, was one of the co-founders of the London Marathon.
“The London Marathon is about positivity. Another one of the aims of my father and John [Disley, the co-founders] was to show that, on occasion, the family of humankind could be joyous together, celebrate together.
“That’s what the London Marathon is about. That is a force for good and we didn’t feel that channel shared those values. And therefore we have come off that channel.”
The London Marathon had 192,000 followers on X and has not posted there for the past three months. One of their last updates was on the field, celebrating McColgan’s entry into the race her mother, Liz, won in 1996.
In December, the Guardian reported on data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb that “the number of daily active US users on X has dropped by 8.4% since early October, from 32.3-million to 29.6-million...
Exodus
“The exodus has coincided with the departure of prominent figures such as the filmmakers Guillermo del Toro and Mike Flanagan, and the actors Quinta Brunson and Mark Hamill. Others, such as the politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have maintained their X account but have begun posting more regularly on Bluesky.”
Many sports teams and athletes have remained on X, primarily because of their massive follower base and reluctance to start building from the ground up on, say, Bluesky. Liverpool Football Club, for example, has 24-million followers, Manchester United 38.6-million and Arsenal 22-million.
The Bundesliga team St Pauli became one of, if not the first top league European team to leave X late last year.
“The Boys in Brown joined the platform in 2013 and had 250,000 followers”, read a statement from the club. “The club said that owner Elon Musk had turned a space for debate into an amplifier of hate that was capable of influencing the German parliamentary election campaign.
“Since taking over Twitter, as the platform was previously known, Musk has converted X into a hate machine. Racism and conspiracy theories are allowed to spread unchecked and even curated. Insults and threats are seldom sanctioned and are sold as freedom of speech.”
Werder Bremen left a few days later, saying “with the recent radicalisation of the platform, a line had been crossed for the club”.
Werder Bremen’s director of communications, Christoph Pieper, told the Guardian last year: “We are leaving 600,000 followers on X for only 9,000 on Bluesky. It can have economic consequences for us, because our partners have paid for a range that was significantly greater at X than it is now at Bluesky. But … we as a club have moral values. We fight against transphobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, discrimination. For us a place where there is no regulation for hate speech is not the place to be.”
Harassment, misinformation, hate speech, racism and right-wing propaganda, and that’s just the Musk Rat. The London Marathon is leaving X in a position of strength. It is the world’s most popular marathon with “840,000 people from around the world” seeking one of the “56,000 places for Sunday’s event in the capital”.
It has become the most vocal of X-pats, guided by a greater good rather than a greater audience. It deserves the highest of praises for standing up against the hidden poison pens.
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