As 2025 draws to a close, I’m going to invite Critic readers to join me in one New Year’s Resolution for 2025: I will not thoughtlessly promote engagement bait.
I know. It’s hard. We’ve all been there. We’re scrolling through Twitter — or Facebook, or Instagram — and we find something that annoys or amuses us so much that we share it before asking, “Is this true?”
But we should ask ourselves that — because it often isn’t.
Peter Lloyd is a journalist and the author of Stand By Your Manhood: An Essential Guide for Modern Men. He posts a lot on Twitter. Specifically, he tends to post viral videos with supposedly descriptive captions.
As I was lazing about on Boxing Day, a Tweet from Mr Lloyd passed across my timeline. It contained a video of a young female vicar who is apparently big on TikTok. Reverend Pippa White was arguing that Mary was the “main character” in the Christmas story. The video was a bit annoying, like everything on TikTok, but what I noticed was Lloyd’s interpretation:
Girlboss reverend says Mary was the ultimate star of Christmas because she had the power to abort Jesus.
Reverend White said nothing about abortion. She was referencing the idea that Mary consented to carrying Jesus before being impregnated. (Here is a recent article on the subject from that bastion of liberal Christianity The Catholic Herald.) Regardless, people filled Mr Lloyd’s replies with comments like “Disgusting” and “Demonic”.
Later that day, another Tweet from Mr Lloyd popped up on Twitter. He was sharing a video from Sadiq Khan with the caption:
“Christmas is about diversity.” – Sadiq Khan
Somehow, despite those words being in quotation marks, Khan didn’t actually say them. Yes, he offered up some vague words about people who have “sought to divide us”, and how we should “love … without exception”, so I can see the argument for Lloyd’s words being a summary of Khan’s position, but then why the quotation marks?
Of course, the answer is that the provocative quote maximises engagement. Maximising engagement is presumably why Mr Lloyd has claimed that Sarah Crew, Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Police, “vowed to arrest/prosecute anyone flying a UK flag” when she actually suggested that it might be a criminal offence to fly it on public property. It’s presumably why he claimed that the Bondi Beach terrorists were Pakistani when they actually had Indian heritage (India just doesn’t sound Muslim enough?). It’s presumably why he claimed that a criminal will not be deported when she will. It’s presumably why he posted a video of “Birmingham City Council” which does not appear to have shown Birmingham City Council. It’s presumably why he posted a video implying that it showed Muslims vandalising a Christmas tree when it seems to show a post-Christmas Coptic Christian ritual. It’s presumably why he suggested that Joey Barton had received “6months in jail” when he had received a suspended sentence.
Sometimes, Lloyd’s cavalier attitude towards the truth is more baffling. A Christopher Hitchens clip from 2009 is pointlessly claimed to have been from 2001. A hunting rifle used by a Bondi Beach terrorist is farcically claimed to have been “designed for mass casualties”. (This brought American gun enthusiasts out en masse in condemnation, which was probably not what Mr Lloyd was trying to accomplish.)
All these errors, by the way, are from this month. A longer trawl could uncover even more egregious examples, like when he claimed that the suspect in the Magdeburg Christmas market attack is a Muslim when he is very much anti-Islam, or when he claimed that a human smuggling gang were Albanian when they were visibly North African. But a month of errors should suffice to show that these are not examples of human fallibility (yes, we all make errors from time to time). It’s just how Lloyd rolls. He doesn’t get things wrong. He doesn’t care what’s right.
This style of tweeting has become far more ubiquitous since Elon Musk monetised Twitter. One might imagine that Mr Lloyd would be grateful to Elon Musk for giving him the chance to professionalise habitual disingenuousness. Actually, he spends a lot of time complaining about how little attention he supposedly receives. “None of my posts have had more than 9 retweets, today,” he’s sulked, “Because I’m shadowbanned … This is not free speech, @elonmusk.” “6 retweets. LOL,” he’s griped elsewhere, “What’s the fucking point?” (He then tagged Elon Musk again, as if the Tesla and SpaceX boss was going to take time out of his day to address Mr Lloyd’s allegedly underperforming Tweets.) A supposedly low payout this month inspired Mr Lloyd to make seven separate public complaints to Twitter bosses.
Well, it’s good to know that being prolifically misleading does not always pay. But it can do. (Mr Lloyd’s misrepresentation of Reverend White has been viewed 220,000 times.) It’s rather sad. I am — in case this is your first time reading me — no great admirer of the Church of England, police officials or Sadiq Khan. One should not have to misrepresent them to criticise them. It’s a bit like framing Al Capone.
It also veers too far towards validating establishment fearmongering about “disinformation”. This is a form of elite neurosis which is very often irrational if not outright opportunistic. Why do anything to validate its existence? Singling out Mr Lloyd has been a bit unfair here because he is not unique. There are all kinds of people twisting the facts into especially unusual shapes in search of online engagement. It actively enables our political opponents.
But there’s a broader political — and moral — point to make. To the extent that I’m right-wing, it is largely because I think left-wingers make false claims about the world — about human equality, about the means of economic flourishing, about the nature of historical development et cetera. So, it is especially irritating to see right-wingers being so deeply committed to bullshit. Before anything else, our claims should be accurate — or at the very least honest.
So, join me in trying not to thoughtlessly promote engagement bait in 2026. We’ll be better — and happier — for it.
