John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, described his preaching for the first time outside the confines of the pulpit as “submitting to be more vile”. Hitherto he had seen this as something alien to his understanding of his mission.
That was my feeling when, at the start of a year as lord mayor of Bradford in 2016, I was expected to use Twitter on a daily basis. Apparently it was a 21st-century civic tradition and it was expected of me. The only way I could cope with this alien activity was by reflecting on the day’s activities for up to half an hour and carefully crafting a suitable sentence arising out of one event, a harmless ritual that some people appreciated.
Marina Hyde’s assertion that arguing on the internet qualifies you as a twat is perfectly sound (What better owner for Twitter than Elon Musk, master of the ill-advised tweet?, 26 April). I would want to add that letting your fingers run ahead of your brain on any digital platform should always be avoided.
Geoff Reid
Bradford
• If Elon Musk was really keen to use Tesla for a “radical green energy transition”, he’d make his cars cheaper, and the Tesla charging points would be open to all e-car owners, rather than just being exclusive proprietary hardware.
Apart from that, he wouldn’t emit so many tonnes of CO2 shooting cars stupidly into space, and he wouldn’t distract us all from our common fate on Earth with his fairytales (presumably also proprietary) about the future on Mars and beyond. If there’s to be any kind of “radical transition” that offers us all a future, it has absolutely nothing to do with Musk and his ilk.
Alastair Penny
Durbuy, Belgium
• Joel Golby suggests that the best thing Elon Musk can do is delete Twitter (27 April). He’s not going to do that. However, those who are concerned about a self-promoting billionaire controlling online discourse have a simple solution: delete your own Twitter account.
I know that these online platforms have a way of becoming addictive and users feel that they cannot live without their “drug of choice” – but really, we lived for thousands of years without Twitter.
Anything that was so popular with Donald Trump must be suspect – and if enough people just delete their accounts, it will die. That would be worthwhile and really funny: to see Musk so spectacularly “burned”.
Martin Coult
London
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