It feels like a badge of honour. Years ago I was fired from ITV’s Crossroads, today I’ve been banned by TikTok. I’m a rebel. I’m dangerous. I’m bad. You thought you knew me, but this is a whole other side I’ve kept hidden. I know how to battle social media, and I’m just crazy enough to do it.

Okay, it’s more likely a server error, but still, I’m having to appeal the decision and everything.

All I do on TikTok, by the way, is post a version of the short tip videos I make for my 58keys YouTube channel, 10- and 20-second pieces on how to do this or that, or fix Word —

Oh.

Hang on.

I’ve done such a short video tip every weekday this year but the other day I was so very fed up with the insanity of Microsoft Word that I posted a video demonstrating how to fix every one of its problems. Doesn’t matter if it’s that when you type a single apostrophe, it enters a comma instead. Doesn’t matter if you italicise a word and instead Word reformats the paragraph so that it’s justified right, ragged left.

No, whatever your Microsoft Word problem is, that video of mine showed the solution. It’s a video of clicking on the File menu, then choosing Quit.

I do that, then I’m banned. Coincidence? I think so, yes.

It’d be good to have that kind of impact, to know that the searing strength of my tiny gag upset the apple cart, or the Windows cart, and that I had to be silenced with an unsanctioned hit against my TikTok account.

Actually, I do remember a Microsoft PR person once saying I’d made them cry. Don’t imagine I’m proud of this, but they’d sent me a review copy of some version of Word and I sent them back a couple of pages reporting on what wasn’t working. It was shocking. This app was about to ship and key features that Microsoft was promoting simply did not work. I’m sorry I ruined the PR person’s day, but I suspect the tears were frustration that they knew Microsoft wouldn’t do anything.

As they would have well known, Microsoft logic is this: is there a feature called X? Yes. Does it work? Who cares?

You think I’m exaggerating but I can give you specific examples where Microsoft pretended to add a feature to Word solely so that corporate buyers would see it on the checklist and buy the app. Anyway, that version of Word shipped as planned, and it was roundly panned.

But maybe it was what set me down this road to becoming the exciting, unpredictable menace that I’ve become. Maybe it was this that means TikTok is scared of me.

Or it’s another bug and anyway, it feels so long ago now that social media was actually interesting.