Meathwoman's Diary: Why it’s always High Noone in the wild west of social media

Earlier this month week I mentioned social media star Garron Noone in this column. It was in the context of his tongue in cheek take on St Patrick's Day and how the Irish playfully go along with being the butt of the joke.

Noone's profile has skyrocketed in the last year or so in the sphere of Instagram and Tik Tik and he recently made an appearance on the Late Late Show but I did wonder fleetingly if people would know who I was talking about. One thing is for sure, if you didn't know who Noone was a couple of weeks ago, you sure as hell do now.

The musician and comedian made the perilous move to speak about immigration in one of his videos and has inevitably paid the price.

In a nutshell he said how there needs to be an open conversation around the issue as many communities had concerns. Cue the onslaught of social media court where everyone with a profile is judge, jury and executioner.

On one hand, Trump had all but the Mayo man's invitation in the post to visit the White House as Andrew Tate's brother Tristan got in on the debate (he's another story).

The 'far right' if we use labels for a minute were doing somersaults as they hijacked him as their poster boy for their anti immigration agenda, 'the left' generally understood his standing and backed Garron's choice to speak about the unspeakable. Meanwhile 'the far left' claimed he was racist.

All the backlash resulted in the Tik Tok sensation deleting his social media accounts as it all became too much.

Politicians, celebrities and other social media influencers shared their support for Garron, imploring him to reinstate his profiles. Noone is right, an open conversation is needed about immigration but believing that neither makes you pro immigration or racist.

The thing that is dangerous is staying silent and letting those with unsavoury agendas fill in the blanks and creating a following for its extreme views, something that is happening more and more as people feel disenfranchised in the midst of a housing crisis among other things.

We have seen groups form here in Meath against IPAS centres taking to the streets in protest. But perhaps if there was more engagement among locals, people might not feel like the wool has been pulled over their eyes while the rug is being taken from under them.

The scaremongering could stop and we could deal with the facts. Until then I suspect this debate will rage on.