Now, my event didn’t quite generate that level of take-me-to-the-fainting-couch backlash. But we were besieged online by a squadron of nitpickers, who started from the position that they hated the event and worked backwards to find out why. Deviously, I had foiled them by ensuring that the panel was racially mixed, and by including a transgender woman, foreclosing the promising “cis white bitches” line of attack then popular in feminist circles. The hall was wheelchair-accessible and had a hearing loop for deaf attendees, Gaza had not yet emerged as a purity test, and COVID was not even a twinkle in a diseased bat’s eye. Conceding that the event had passed every intersectional test, the detractors fell back on the great constant: capitalism. Although all of the panelists had waived their speaking fee, we were charging £5 (about $6.50) a ticket, to cover the room rental. Was I not aware, one tweeter asked, that £5 was the cost of a meal to a single mother? Checkmate. The crime had been found, and I was guilty of being a privileged idiot, rolling around in my feminist loot like Scrooge McDuck.

The event went ahead, but you never knew when one person’s gripe would derail everything; what we had envisioned as a warm, community-focused discussion instead felt like volunteering for a sprint through a minefield. (In the end, none of the haters turned up, and it was a pleasant evening.) This was the moment when I realized that social media had empowered drive-by whinings by sociopaths, and that progressive politics had allowed them to cloak themselves in righteousness. What might once have been recognized as narcissism, jealousy, the result of a personality disorder—or just plain boredom—was now transfigured into “calling out” those who had erred. The people pointing fingers usually did nothing themselves, apart from complaining, which had the happy side effect that they could never be accused of committing an impure act.