Stephen Fry has said he wants to “destroy” social media because it has “polluted” our culture.
The actor, 67, was previously a prolific Twitter user but deleted his account when Elon Musk completed a multi-billion dollar deal to take over the platform – now known as X – in 2022.
Fry said he started out as an “absolute lover” of the “religion” of social media, but is now considering spending the rest of his life fighting it.
Speaking to Stig Abell on Times Radio, he said: “I always hated, absolutely hated Facebook, never, never trusted or liked it at all. But Twitter, I just thought, wow, it's wonderful. It's like a beautiful swimming hole, [a] beautiful river where you can all swim."
The actor continued that the “beautiful swimming hole” where Twitter users had “all made friends with each other” suddenly saw “turds floating on the surface”.
When Musk took over Twitter, Fry quickly posted a picture of Scrabble letters spelling out “Goodbye” to his 12.5m followers to announce he was leaving.
Fry explained that billionaire’s takeover was akin to the Twitter river being “contaminated” and “polluted” with “old rusting shopping carts” and “broken glass” that “cut at the soles of our feet”.
The former QI host said that this contamination was dangerous to children breathing in the content online. “The cultural air they breathe, that’s polluted,” he said. “You can’t stop them breathing it because it’s everywhere.”
Fry said he may dedicate his life to being like the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, who travelled thousands of miles a week telling people about slavery and “what it really was”.
“I try and think, well, should I now devote the rest of my life to fighting?” he questioned. “I'd be like St. Paul in a way, he started off as Saul of Tartus persecuting Christians, ended up a Christian. I'd be a reverse version of it.”
He explained: “I started out as an absolute lover of this new religion. And now I want to destroy it. Destroy is a bit strong, but I want it to be controlled.”
Fry acknowledged Musk’s “free speech” argument, which has seen hate speech rise on the platform under the businessman’s ownership, and admitted he would probably be considered an “enemy” of the movement.
“Is a gardener an enemy of free growth because they do a bit of weeding?” asked the actor.
“That's all I'm saying. We need to weed. We need to make the growth strong and healthy so that everybody can enjoy the garden because it's otherwise a mess.”
