It’s now almost two decades since a fresh-faced Alex Turner stepped up to the microphone in a shabby-looking studio to advise onlookers, “Don’t believe the hype.” What followed was the music video to “I Bet That You Look Good On the Dancefloor”, a defining hit of noughties British indie rock.

Despite Turner’s warnings, fans were swept up. When the Arctic Monkeys’ debut album was released in June 2006, it became the fastest selling debut in British chart history. “In terms of sheer impact, where a band has come from virtual obscurity to achieve huge, overnight, chart success, we haven’t seen anything quite like this since the Beatles,” squealed an HMV spokesman.

In hindsight, it looks more like the last gasp on the fag end of Britpop. British rock bands have shrunk in cultural relevance, derided as “landfill indie” or the whining of the untrendy cohort of white suburban heterosexual teenage boys.

Nobody much seems to care how Turner feels about this

As such, when Arctic Monkeys headlined Glastonbury this year, many fans complied with Turner’s hype-denying instruction. One Twitter user quoted in the Mail captured the mood, describing them as “a mediocre lounge band”.

There was undoubted glee as several newspapers collected the snarkiest comments, much of the press now unwilling to fund jaded rock critics with generous expenses. “If they play Mardy Bum any slower they’ll be headlining next year too” would have been worth a few quid, had the writer been born in an earlier decade.

The argument goes that Turner went native during a stint in Los Angeles, in direct betrayal of the Arctic Monkeys’ early mockery of would-be-American poseurs. Such was the backlash to Turner’s transatlantic turn that in his hometown of Sheffield graffiti appeared in 2018, asking: “Hey Alex, how’s California?”

Nobody much seems to care how Turner feels about this as he returns to the road until October. If Sheffield’s second favourite son (Sean Bean takes the top spot for his many fictional deaths) feels aggrieved at the online bashing, he’ll have to take it to a Californian shrink.

There’s a striking difference between the treatment of Turner and friends and another Glastonbury performance. Whilst newspapers compiled the most withering put-downs of the Arctic Monkeys, the worthies of Worthy Farm were whipping up outrage over online comments about Billy Nomates, a post-punk solo act by artist Tor Maries.

Whilst the Billy Nomates gig appeared to go down well enough on the farm, its promotion online was greeted by what Maries called an “insane” level of “personal abuse”. She promised there would be no further shows after the summer and asked BBC 6 Music to pull social media posts sharing the performance — with the corporation eventually complying.

Outpourings of support for Maries were swift and voluminous. Musicians such as Billy Bragg, presenters like Lauren Laverne and comedian Robin Ince were amongst those praising her set. Maries’ collaborator Geoff Barrow of the band Portishead derided her critics as a bunch of “6 Music dads”, in reference to devotees of the BBC radio station.

As Barrow is 51, I guess he knows a dad when he sees one. His belittling of an unfashionable group was no doubt influenced by claims that criticism of Maries was motivated by misogyny.

“Glastonbury should have been a career highlight for the fabulous Billy Nomates but instead toxic and misogynistic online culture ruins everything and she’s asked them to remove footage of her incredible set,” said musician The Anchoress, echoing a common view.

Those who seek the limelight are often least comfortable in its glare

As is often the case in such stories, few details were given of the abuse. “When an artist telling you that the impact is such that it means they want to leave their job, listen,” The Anchoress added, a kind of “believe women” policy for online trolling.

What can be scraped from the internet, however, suggests that comments about the Billy Nomates gig were decidedly tepid. A now-deleted Twitter post has one commenter describing Billy Nomates as “bloody awful”, whilst another bemoans the lack of a live band — a criticism made by the Guardian only last year. Building on the theme, a third poster compares her to “a drunken mum doing karaoke”.

If it’s harsh stuff, it’s no harsher than the criticism against the Arctic Monkeys. It’s also no ruder than much of the commentary around Ian Brown playing to backing tracks last year, also derided as karaoke. On a long enough Twitter timeline, the probability of anyone forever escaping trolling drops to zero.

With a bit of distance from events, even Maries thought the aftermath of her Glastonbury performance had been “massively blown out of proportion”. Awkwardly for those who wanted to make it a feminist talking point, she said that misogyny was “not really part” of her story in the music industry.

She put her reaction down to having “a different nervous system”. She’s right enough that everybody reacts to criticism differently. Whilst we encourage one another to take criticism with grace, it takes a rare talent to shrug off vitriol.

An enduring irony of art is that those who seek the limelight are often least comfortable in its glare. The surprise is less that Billy Nomates’ allies took exception to Twitter sludge, and more that performing artists don’t throw similar wobblies more often.

The trouble for artists, especially those who sneer at mainstream consumers, is that to publish something is to offer it up for rejection, even in harsh terms. People are not obliged to like music you make, films you produce or even articles you write.

It is no bad thing that few people express their misgivings with the delicacy of a social worker talking someone off a ledge. To really enjoy an art form requires some distaste for when it’s not to your liking, and people have the right to express it. It’s not bullying, it’s criticism.