This Side of the Pond

Two columns about tea in two weeks – this will be a record, even for me, but it’s a story that needs to be shared. Last week, having done nothing at all to anyone except to exist in the first place, a brand of British teabags managed to get itself in hot water (but not the good kind from a kettle).

The storm in a teacup began with an innocent photograph. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak shared a picture in which he stood next to a giant bag of Yorkshire Tea™ and a selection of mugs.

The caption read, “Quick budget prep break making tea for the team. Nothing like a good Yorkshire brew.” It would seem that he, along with a high percentage of his fellow Brits, is a fan of the hearty notes of the company’s signature flavor.

It’s currently the most popular brand in Britain, so it’s not exactly a controversial claim. Making a cup of tea is also a national pastime – we do it several times a day. Nothing to see here, let’s move on.

Except we can’t, because for reasons I can barely fathom, the photograph caused the kind of fury that’s normally reserved for puppy killers. A call went out to boycott Yorkshire Tea, because not everyone likes Rishi Sunak and apparently it must be the fault of the brand that the chancellor enjoys drinking it.

The brand’s Twitter account was inundated. The rage was incomprehensible.

The poor person in charge of Yorkshire Tea’s social media accounts had a heck of a weekend. He or she – who knows? We’re all invisible behind our keyboards – was inundated with abusive messages.

Let’s take a moment to consider what this person’s day job usually consists of. They spend their time searching for interesting nuggets about tea, such as the news that a teapot-shaped emoji will be released this year and photographs of a squirrel clambering into a Yorkshire Tea-branded tin.

It’s not the world’s most controversial career and most of what this person shares is designed to do nothing more than make people smile while reminding them that tea is delicious. Sometimes they even launch a charity drive, such as a recent one that involved the sale of branded bobble hats.

It must be the world’s least stressful job description and the last thing you’d expect as you handed in your resume would be to one day find yourself at the receiving end of a stream of political ire. As this poor social media manager put it, “For some, our tea just being drunk by someone they don’t like means it’s forever tainted, and they’ve made sure we know it.”

The abuse kept coming for three days. It was the usual overreaction that has come to dominate social media, which historian Peter N. Stearns says is all about shame. A fascinating article about this incident by Bijan Stephen for The Verge points out that, according to Stearns’ theory, Twitter tirades are the latest version of the public stocks in which badly behaved people were once displayed.

The idea is to create shame, which we have long believed is an effective method of altering someone’s behavior for the better. If someone steals their next door neighbor’s sheep, stick ‘em in the stocks so we can all shake our heads in disgust until they never want to do a bad thing again.

Watching the internet scream at trophy hunters and people who say racist things suddenly makes sense when you realize these keyboard warriors are trying to shame them into what they deem to be better behavior, but I think we can still see the problem. In all but the most obvious cases of wrongdoing (and even then, only after the law has proven guilt), who is to say the shrieking few are in the right?

We see it constantly these days; it even has a name: “cancel culture”. If the internet doesn’t agree with a person’s actions or opinions, the fashion is to harangue them until they lose their jobs, disappear from the public eye or otherwise pay for their “crime”.

Because it’s so surreal, the Yorkshire Tea example demonstrates why this is a flawed way of policing other people’s behavior. The people shouting at Yorkshire Tea are angry with Sunak because he is involved in the Brexit process, and those people didn’t want to leave the European Union. Not only is that purely a matter of personal opinion, what exactly is a brand of teabags supposed to do about it?

And why is it the company’s fault in the first place? Yorkshire Tea didn’t ask Sunak to drink their tea – I’m certain they didn’t even know he’d bought a packet. The fact they “weren’t asked or involved” in the post was something quickly shared with followers, to no avail whatsoever.

At one point, no doubt frustrated, the social media person was forced to respond to a particularly bitter tirade by pointing out the futility of the situation. “Sue, you’re shouting at tea,” they said.

But Yorkshire Tea then surprised me by reacting to their predicament in the most wonderful way possible. They used it as an opportunity to encourage us all to do better.

“It’s been pretty shocking to see the determination some have had to drag us into the middle of a political mudfight,” said the social media manager. “But it’s been lovely to see others speak up for us – we’re so grateful to everyone who’s done that in a civil way.”

They went on to speak directly as the human being whose job it was to answer the tweets, saying they understood it could have been a lot worse if the hatred had been directed at them as an individual, rather than a brand.

“There’s more emotional distance and I’ve had a team to support me when it got a bit much,” they said, in what I feel is the understatement of the month. “But for anyone about to vent their rage online, even to a company – please remember there’s a human on the other end of it, and try to be kind.”

It seemed to work, because the trolls did quiet down. However, my favorite reaction came from PG Tips™, my own favorite brand of teabags.

They posted a statement that read, “Just wanted to let you know that I’m here for you” and urged Yorkshire Tea to send a message if they fancy a cuppa, “From one social media manager to another”.

A touch of solidarity and a splash of kindness – that’s much more along the lines of what this world needs, if you ask me. Of course, we wouldn’t need to support each other if we could all stop yelling at teabags.