Fake truth-tellers like Andrew Doyle, with posh degrees from Oxford University, are creating a hyper-reality on twitter that has spilled over into our daily lives and now blends with real news. Who’s afraid of Titania McGrath?
You’ve probably heard by now that the Oxford-educated, Andrew Doyle, is a man behind a fake, or what some would say, parody Twitter account of Titania McGrath. Instead of going under his own identity to try out his so-called “exercise in free speech”, this Oxford Ph.D. in poetry created in April 2018 a make-believe, twenty-four-year-old female character Titania McGrath who quickly gained over 190,000 followers.
The offensive posts Doyle has been publishing as Titania, have resulted in several suspensions of the fake twitter account. However, as it usually happens with these types of radical content, his insulting tweets became even more popular.
The queen of the fairies: Meet Titania McGrath
Titania is a radical vegetarian (I am sure Piers Morgan would love to hear that), a slam poet and an author of “Woke: A Guide to Social Justice” by an author who does not exist.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Andrew Doyle explained that “woke is the concept that everything must be inclusive and inoffensive, that you always use the correct language and be hyper-aware of other people’s sensitivities”
In other words, Doyle not only hates to be politically correct but is going a step further in the opposite direction of the BlackLivesMatter movement who was first to use the word “woke” in reference to “being alert to injustice in society, especially racism.”
Whether Doyle is doing a social experiment, a vanity project or some type of a hyper-reality art project is hard to tell given that the lines between reality and fiction have seemingly merged. In essence, Andrew Doyle has created a female alter ego and is giving interviews to the reputable media in Britain through the voice and identity of Titania McGrath. What usually would be characterized as a dissociative personality disorder, in the age of fake news, we are embracing as a real-life exemplar of The Onion.
Woke Healer or An Injurer?
Titania McGrath has strong political views on Brexit, even proposing to “heal” the country by calling for a second referendum. In an interview for The Spectator, Titania claims that Brexit has shown that “democracy does not work”, but then inconsistently making calls to ignore the democratic vote of those who opted to Brexit.
Doyle wants to have it both ways and is speaking in two political voices at the same time. The problem I see here is that the British conservative media is embracing Titania and conducting interviews with her as if she really existed.
While Titania’s point of view would be an interesting art performance, it is placed in legitimate news outlets to blend with the rest of the factual content we consider news. Why should anyone follow a fiction character and absorb political views as if a real person were talking? Who the hell is Titania McGrath?
That is, to say the least, dangerous in a broader social and political context of fake news. While everyone knows that New Yorker’s Borowitz Report or The Onion is fake news, Andrew Doyle has started a very dangerous trend that can result in more people following his example of blurring the lines between the reality and fiction without clearly distinguishing which one is what.
Banned Alex Jones could, for example, create a female alter ego of Infowars and claim for it to be a truth-telling hyperreality account and in that way disseminate the ideas he would not be able to otherwise.
Doyle claims that Titania is a truth teller, but we all know that in a democracy we do not need to create a fake identity in order to state the truth. The “Woke Era” as seen through the lenses of Andrew Doyle is a Fake News Era. To be Titania McGrath is to be an imposter.