Hadley Freeman: Grrrrrr!

I've just been reading this Grauniad article: Facebook groups are the new lynch mob, by Hadley Freeman. I was skimming through most of it. It didn't tell me anything new. People have deeply disturbing, nasty, dangerous opinions and prejudices and they're not afraid to tell you about them in comment threads on the web. Fine. Yawn. Yet another social media is bad article to annoy the Linehans and Brookers and Morans.

But then I read this :

The much-publicised Save 6 Music Facebook group was obviously well-intended, but perhaps if half the people who joined it had ever listened to the station before the threat of its closure there wouldn't have been the need for the group in the first place.

It's lazy. It's disappointing. It's an appalling use of hyperbole. Most of all it's wrong. I write as a 6 Music listener who had not joined the Save BBC 6Music group.

The only other campaigning facebook group I seem to have joined is For Simon Singh and Free Speech - Against the BCA Libel Claim. That one's more important even than a radio station, so please consider joining, if you agree that is.

Back to the hyperbole. The implication is that Save BBC 6Music has considerably more members than there are actual 6 music listeners. At the time of writing, the facebook group membership was 154,893. The 6 Music audience for February 2010 was 695,000.

Let's take the ratio Hadley suggests : 'half'. That's 77,447 (rounding up) people who don't listen to 6Music, but who think it's a good use of the licence fee. That would increase the 6Music audience to 772,447, or, if you like, a hike of a shade over 11%.

Sorry to say, Hadley, but bumping the listener count by half the facebook support, would make fuck all difference.