At around 10pm on Thursday evening, Laurence Fox was known as ‘that fella from Lewis’, ‘that fella that used to be married to Billie Piper’, ‘that fella who’s started speaking out a bit in interviews’ or ‘that fella who’s released an album, did you know he released an album? I thought he was just an actor’. He was lesser known as that fella who had around 50,000 Twitter followers.
Then Laurence Fox went on Question Time. Then he appeared on the front of The Sunday Times saying, ‘Why I Won’t Date ‘Woke’ Women’. Then he had an online fight with Lily Allen. And now, he has – at the time of publishing – 149.4k followers and has become a poster boy for the anti-woke.
How did this happen?
Last Thursday, Laurence accused a woman of racism for calling him a ‘white privileged male’. During a debate on the treatment of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Rachel Boyle, a university lecturer and researcher into race and ethnicity, argued that the treatment was racist, adding: ‘She is a black woman, and she has been torn to pieces.’
Fox dismissed the view saying: ‘It's not racism. We're the most tolerant, lovely country in Europe. It's so easy to throw the card of racism at everybody... and it's really starting to get boring now.’
When she countered, ‘What worries me about your comment is you are a white privileged male…’ he gave a massive groan, saying, ‘Oh God… I can’t help what I am, I was born like this, it’s an immutable characteristic. So to call me a white privileged male is to be racist. You’re being racist.’
Social media went into a spin. While some defended him, many mocked him, and others were plain furious at his comments. For his part, Fox tweeted that it was ‘like Christmas come true’.
Well, if he put ‘Trebling my Twitter followers and becoming the most talked about man of the weekend of Saturday 18th January to Sunday 19th January’ then Santa really did deliver.
Laurence’s infamy grew over the weekend after he tweeted Instagram story posts apparently by Lily Allen, saying: ‘Sick to death of luvvies like Lawrence Fox going on TV and forcing their opinions on everybody else when he’ll never have to deal with what normal people have to deal with in his gated community.’ He posted the messages along with the hashtag #stunningandbrave, believed to be relating to a South Park episode mocking politically correct language and a way to mock people he deems to be ‘too woke’
Then came the Sunday Times piece, where he proclaimed he wouldn’t date woke women, to which the majority of the internet replied – cool, no problem here.
It again raises the issue of what people will do – or how controversial they will go – to become "Twitter famous" these days. There’s obviously notable examples in the Piers Morgan/Katie Hopkins tier of things, where you can make an income out of winding up most people, and in ‘giving voice’ to some by jumping on the ever-present state of divisiveness we seem to now find ourselves in. Then there’s the Donald Trump tier of trolling the world and where that gets you. Let’s hope that’s not where we’re going with Laurence.
But the increase in fame Laurence has found over the weekend also says something about the cynicism of it all. Maybe Laurence just wanted to have his say, maybe he thinks he’s giving voice, maybe all he wants is a quiet life and was just honestly answering a question?
Maybe it’s a totally unexpected consequence of his words that he’s suddenly got this following. Maybe he doesn’t even want them to buy his album that was released at the end of the year and the tour that is plugged by a pinned tweet at the top of his page, in his Twitter picture, header and bio.
Maybe, maybe… but I can’t help but come back to a friend who said this morning: ‘I literally did not know who he was before this.’
I can't help but think she's not the only one. And, while I understand that staying in your belief bubble isn’t always the best way to be, I can’t help but think that you have the power over who you click to follow… and about the power that that, in turn, gives them.
READ MORE: Gemma Styles: Why There's No Easy Solution To Twitter's Trolling Problem