Is nothing beneath the unionist and nationalist pedlars of hate?

The Time Traveller ponders whether the Morlocks were members of the working class, who toiled underground and mutated into these brutes. The upper-class became the Eloi, gentle souls who live above ground but are now eaten by the Morlocks.

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Politically, it’s an unpleasant notion, but then Wells was quite hot for eugenics, as were many intellectuals back then.

I think, though, we can dare correct Wells, both bringing his ideas up to date and purging them off their icky politics. So damn the audacity, I’m going to rewrite the Morlock and Eloi back-story. I reckon the Morlocks were humans from the early 2020s: that species we now call "very online".

You know the type: TruthSeeker07585738. Has a flag in their social media profile. Either very Union Jacky, or very Saltirey. Definitely over 40 (kids are way too cool to behave like "TruthSeeker"). Can easily be male or female. Does a lot of "research" (ie watches Youtube videos, googles stuff). Describes themselves - without irony - as "a critical thinker".

They spend hours online posting that "Humza Yousaf is Satan" or "Scotland is an English colony" (delete as appropriate). TruthSeeker will spoil your family Christmas something rotten. They’re deeply, profoundly, boring. They’re also thoroughly hateful - in both senses of the word: they spread cruelty and lies online, and in turn make themselves so contemptible it’s a wonder their children can still look at them.

social media can be a cesspool of hate (Image: getty)

The Eloi, I reckon, are the rest of us. Ordinary bods going about our day, while the Morlocks scurry around beneath our feet. Dare go online, though, and the monsters might eat you.

In The Time Machine, our hero arrives in a future southern England. Again, I’m going to be idiotically bold and tweak that detail too. I think Wells should have set his scene in the Central Belt. As frankly, the Morlocks are just a bunch of Scottish trolls, some unionist, some nationalist, all appalling.

The Morlocks have been loping around a lot lately, out-stinking each other online. First, they leapt on reports that two unnamed SNP politicians were having  "steamy lockdown affair".

Have you ever, incidentally, heard anyone in real life refer to affairs as "steamy"? Only in the tabloids do affairs "steam", though sometimes they’re "torrid" and "raunchy".

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This is unpleasant terrain, however. A spouse says they’re wronged. The SNP insists that claims that politicians broke lockdown during an affair are false. So let’s not venture into private lives any more than to set the scene for the Morlocks, entering stage right.

In this instance, unionist Morlocks. They belched green-aired poison all over Scottish Twitter, revelling like pigs in the brown stuff. Worse, though, was their frankly defamatory claims about SNP politicians.

TruthSeeker, you see, had done their research - with Sherlockian deduction, I’m sure - concluding that 2+2 = 423, and so began naming nationalist politicians as parties in the alleged affair. Evidently, living in a basement and screaming into the ether gives a direct line to the intimate details of politicians’ sex lives.

Next, came the nationalist Morlocks as represented by All Under One Banner (AUOB), the marchy people who make the MacGlashan character from the old sketch show Absolutely seem the very pinnacle of calm and reason.

Out they slithered on social media, tweeting this about the death of Alistair Darling: “The darling lapdog of London rule who fronted the 2014 campaign to keep the people of Scotland in poverty. Good riddance to this treacherous man.”

The words "reptilian ghouls" doesn’t quite do their awfulness justice. Of course, SNP figures rushed to denounce AUOB, including Joanna Cherry; though I’m sure I recall the honourable member marching and speaking at AUOB rallies. Perhaps, AUOB somehow miraculously changed for the worse in the intervening period? It’s entirely understandable.

Many ordinary Yes voters saw AUOB for what it was long ago, however, that’s why they took nothing to do with the outfit and its divisive marches.

Similarly, the vast majority of decent unionists would sooner die of shame than endorse the behaviour of their troglodyte cousins online.

None of these Union Jack or Saltire fetishists represent the many decent folk inclined towards either unionism or nationalism.

Most ordinary, sane Scottish people don’t think about the constitution all day every day. We have families, lives and work to be getting on with, and we certainly don’t hate our neighbours because they’ve a different vision of Scotland’s future than we do.

Now, some might claim that this is all a storm in a teacup, that Twitter isn’t real life. Well, I reckon to that, I’ll reply "blah blah blah", as Greta T would say of Cop28.

Wrong. Social media is the real world now. We see the effects of social media in the streets every day. Social media attitudes have seeped into reality.

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Ever wonder why every second politician seems to find it necessary to swear these days? Social media has slowly removed that inhibition. Some might say, so what? And I might agree.

But then we can go to the other extreme and watch rioting and violence from Washington to Dublin that was revved up online and ended in real blood on real streets in real life.

You can’t put genies back in bottles - or Morlocks back underground. Once they’re out, they’re out. But you can make this kind of behaviour so socially unacceptable that the Morlocks get drowned out when they start their nonsense.

Many people find it hard to stand up to bullies online. There’s no shame in that. But unless more of us start doing that, we’re soon going to wake up and it’ll be AD 802,701, the Morlocks will have won, and you’ll make a very tasty Eloi indeed.