Hopes are rising that Christmas Day could see a 24-hour festive ceasefire on Drinks Twitter.
The platform has been the site of vicious and prolonged exchanges for the last 12 months and the non-stop cycle of self-righteous attack and snarky defence has taken its toll on all sides.
‘It would be so nice if the barrage of raking posts, sniping retweets and high-explosive bullshit could stop – even just for a day,’ said one weary drinks blogger. ‘It’s exhausting being angry the whole time.
‘I don’t know how South Africans do it.’
En primeur slaughter
The casualty numbers have made for grim reading.
One wine importer told Fake Booze that he lost ‘half his batallion of 5000 followers’ while trying to defend his position on en primeur pricing.
And a famous Scotch unit’s entire account was wiped out following a futile attempt to capture the moral high ground in a debate on gender politics.
‘There have been daily raids to shift opponents’ positions on everything from racial bias to pesticides to whether VS cognac gives you cancer,’ said military Twittstorian, Sommer Fensive. ‘But the battle lines never change. All sides’ opinions are just too well dug in.’
Zucked off
‘So much bile is being spilled to no avail,’ said Faye Spuk of the anti social media pressure group, Zucked Off. ‘The drinks Tweets need to fall silent, even if it’s just for 24 hours.’
The group is calling for all parties to cease hostilities on Christmas Day and share songs, cat gifs and football videos across the cultural divide of no-man’s land before ‘settling down with a nice plate of food and a few drinks.’
Cynics have suggested that this would simply lead to yet another toxic pile-on about what wine to have with turkey, whether you can drink stout alongside Christmas pudding and how inappropriate it is to serve a whisky that was once approved by Jim Murray.
But Spuk is hopeful of change.
‘Most people never expected to be on Twitter for this long,’ she said. ‘They signed up years ago, thinking it would be a bit of an adventure. Now they’re stuck in a world of anger, chaos and misery and most of them are desperate to escape.
‘A bit like visiting Vinitaly.’
