Michael Mosley was a man who first rose to fame by infecting himself with parasites to show what effect they have on the human body. He might have drawn the line at the special sort of parasite that haunts social media though – some things are too toxic to ingest. In the days since Mosley disappeared while holidaying on the Greek island of Symi and after today’s not-exactly unexpected announcement that his body has been found, every awful aspect of allowing the public unfettered access to broadcasting their every thought and lunatic beliefs has been in full flow.
Where to begin? Well, let’s start with Michael Mosley, a TV doctor who specialised in health. I had conflicted opinions about Mosley. His TV shows were always entertaining, sometimes even inspirational and he seemed determined to give people the opportunity to regain control of their bodies – in a world of couch potatoes and bad habits, he seemed a force for good. On the other hand, I found his 800 diet to be a tad questionable, even potentially dangerous – at its best, it seemed so restrictive that it seemed to almost set people up to fail and potentially send them back down an unhealthy path that a less extreme diet wouldn’t. Then again, there are people that swear by it – so if it has worked for you, jolly good. Generally though, as ‘celebrities’ go Mosley seemed less objectionable and more genuine than many.
People like to believe that they have a connection with the people that they see on television and everyone loves a mystery, so it was hardly a surprise that so many people were caught up in Mosley’s disappearance. It was, after all, suitably dramatic – a man sets off on a holiday walk and fails to return, with just enough evidence of his route and the people he encountered to be tantalisingly mysterious. Who was the woman that he apparently spoke to at a bus stop? Why did his umbrella not make him stand out (apparently, according to one self-proclaimed expert on Spain – another country than the one Mosley vanished in, we might note – this would have seemed ‘unusual’) and where was his body? How could someone vanish on a tiny island?
Well, the experts of Twitter were quick to offer theories. According to these experts, Michael Mosley had fallen off a cliff, or perhaps thrown himself into the sea, or most definitely had been kidnapped by swarthy bandits who recognised him – shifty Greek kidnappers are apparently very familiar with British TV celebrities. These were the more sensible suggestions. Others were quick to find some conspiracy at work. Why, they asked, was Mosley wearing an iWatch in one photo but not another, offering two insanely blurry blow-up images in which you could barely discern a person, let alone what they had on their wrist. Who was Bus Stop Woman? What does she know? Was she involved in this mysterious crime? And if not, why hadn’t she come forward? The idea that a brief conversation with someone that she didn’t know might not stick in her mind, or that she might not even be aware that an English tourist had vanished was inconceivable.
People love a true crime mystery and no one wants a death to simply be ‘misadventure’. It’s much more entertaining to confidently make statements about a person you’ve never met vanishing in a place that you’ve never been to, as if you are a cross between Columbo and Poirot. For these people, the discovery of the body will not stop the wild theorising because they simply can’t bring themselves to accept that celebrities are human and sometimes, bad things happen to them. There are certainly weird aspects to Mosley’s death if the reported stories are true – why did he not take a phone, why did a doctor consider that a hike in 40-degree heat was a good idea – but smart people do stupid things all the time. People get hit by trains because they believe that they can cross the tracks in time, they crash cars because they are over-confident and don’t pay attention. Perhaps Mosley had done this sort of thing plenty of times before. Perhaps he simply forgot his phone. His death could be – in fact, almost certainly is – a combination of micro-mistakes, a series of bad decisions and external factors that came together in the worst way possible.
The bedroom detectives are one thing. They are harmless enough for the most part. The worst conspiracy theorists are the anti-vaxxer fanatics who arrive like diarrhoea to gloat at the death of another ‘plandemic’ supporter. These people believe that any celebrity or untimely death is down to the Covid vaccine and snort at the ‘sheeple’ who have been “captured by the cult” – a hilarious put-down from people who think that they know better than everyone else based on Q posts. These people, permanently caught up in a hate-driven conspiracy world populated by the worst extremists in the world, have been cheerfully celebrating Michael Mosley’s death – either he was killed by the vaccine or killed himself, wracked with guilt for having pushed the vaccine and caused ‘the death of millions’. Either way, they are thrilled that he is dead. Imagine being one of these people, so utterly caught up in hatred and fanaticism that any sense of humanity has been stripped from you. Imagine believing yourself to be on the side of the angels while saying “good riddance to bad shit” and the like at the reports of his death, based entirely on the invented ideas of the lunatic fringe.
Of course, the strange story of Mosley’s disappearance and death also prompted the supercilious social media crowd who like to preach ‘be kind’ (unless it’s spittle-flecked abuse aimed at someone that they disapprove of, in which case have at it), who feel the need to wag their judgemental finger at those who were speculating about what might have happened with variations of ‘think of his family before posting about this’, while – of course – posting about it themselves. Somehow, I imagine that Mosley’s family were not scouring Twitter – sorry, X – for mentions of him during the time that he was missing, or after his body was found. Egotists white-knighting themselves as the defenders of people that they don’t know might be peak Twitter, a toxic form of narcissism from the sort of people who probably spend their lives correcting others. Sure, speculation hardly helps; neither does it hinder. And if someone is genuinely concerned about how such speculation might affect others, why join in? Why help telegraph Michael Mosley to the trending list?
Some people seem to feel as though they are obliged to comment on current news stories. They have to take a stance, lest people think that they don’t care. Be it politics, war, celebrity TV or sport, there is nothing that they do not need to express an opinion on. Worse still, there are those who – despite having a couple of hundred followers – believe themselves to be Reuters and post news updates (sometimes with BREAKING at the front of their post) as though they have just uncovered the story and are announcing it to the world rather than have just culled it from a news website that reported on it a few hours earlier. A lot of this is just clickbait and a lot of the posters are clearly bots – but honestly, is there anything more pointless than a regurgitated headline that doesn’t even link to a bigger story?
Look, I understand – fame, mystery and death are a combination that is hard to resist. But it’s depressing how the death of a celebrity brings out the narcissists, the lunatics, the hate-mongers and the paranoid in such high numbers. I haven’t even mentioned the people who feel the need to post that they have never heard of/don’t care about Michael Mosley (or any other famous person who dies, it seems), their indifference not stopping them from having to join in the discussion anyway. The thing that brings all these groups together is the need to make it all about the Tweeter – the concern and the contempt, the hand-wringing and the suspicion, all designed to boost the ego of the poster. By the time his body was found, Michael Mosley had become all things to all people: monster and martyr, victim and victimiser, hero and villain. His sad, lonely demise has been turned into a social media sideshow. What a rotten spectacle.
DAVID FLINT
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Agreed as Social Media may have massively widened such aspects as personal opinion, photography and Video/Filmmaking when pre-internet mostly relegated it to newspapers,film,TV and the fringes of society, but all this democratisation has done is to prove that what was previously underneath the surface has now come to the fore in barely literate and often downright nasty, unpleasant SM commenter of all kinds, talent free photographers and video makers mainly interested in just promoting themselves and their odious, pampered egos in the hope of making a cheap,offensive profit in a particularly soulless,artless firm of monetisation, with the very sad untimely passing of Michael Mosley just one example of too many.