If the piano-playing man in Bristol had been Lucy rather than Luke, he'd have been called a bunny boiler

Today, a piano in a Bristol park sits abandoned and ominously silent. Luke Howard, 34, from Bath had vowed to local reporters he’d play continuously in College Green until his ex-girlfriend rekindled their love. Howard, with his tousled boho looks and hangdog expression was, depending on your viewpoint, a delightful living, tinkling elevator pitch for a Channing Tatum summer box office smash, or a menacing symbol of patriarchal arrogance that needed addressing via 10,000 howling feminist Twitter accounts. Howard may not have been anywhere near the home of his ex, but his vow was supposedly “creepy” and “intimidating”. Others argued he was merely a man in love.

In fairness, he was probably a touch of both. It’s possible to be, both at once, a confirmed romantic and a complete nightmare with whom to become romantically entangled. And at least, as a male, Howard enjoyed the benefit of the doubt. If Luke Howard had been called Lucy, she’d have been written off as a “bunny-boiler” by all. Thanks to Glenn Close, we’re still catching the backdraft of that Hollywood narrative.

Dumped women being personally sure that a love affair was important or refusing to take no for an answer is never presented as a romantic thing. When a man tells a woman he “needs space”, the only feasible face-saving reaction is to block him on all communication platforms, never demand so much as a fleeting explanation and, if need be, move immediately to Kuala Lumpur. Even then, you’ll probably still be called “a bit clingy”.

In the case of Luke Howard and his eternal piano threat, what I wanted to know was what he had really done to get the red card. “Life got in the way,” he told reporters, mysteriously. But the problem with staging a public protest with one’s Instagram and Facebook details daubed beside you on a blackboard is that the mystery will evaporate rapidly. The internet’s hive mind will swarm and do its thing.

By lunchtime on Sunday, Facebook commenters were filleting Howard’s private life. Friends of his previous ex-girlfriends were elbowing in with pithy asides. Some commenters were fantasising about smashing the piano lid down on his hands. “She’s probably found a bigger pianist,” one wag quipped.

To me, Howard’s stunt had shades of past Fathers 4 Justice campaigns where “wronged” men solve the problem of their unreasonable ex-wives’ child custody arrangements by dressing up as Danger Mouse, climbing Big Ben, squandering emergency service time and humiliating these possibly very tired single mothers in front of their zumba groups.

No one looks at a man dressed as Batman being wrestled by the Houses of Parliament security team and thinks: “Gosh, I wonder why his wife won’t give him the kids on Saturday? This man clearly has a firm grip on common sense!” No, the manner of these protests nods sagely towards their roots. Once a knobhead, always a knobhead.

Howard’s girlfriend had feasibly scarpered, I thought, due to this petulance, this unreasonableness, and this ability to make things all about himself. As well as that fact, he also needed a good haircut and a square-up with a big box of Persil Non-Bio – but by this point, like everyone else on the internet, I was adding my own narrative. And like everyone else, my narrative was built on personal anecdote and projections.

Women with experience of stalkers or violent ex-partners claimed that they saw in Howard familiar signs of male control. People cooing: “Oh bless him, he’s in love!” can, in many cases, be denying the agency of a woman with valid complaints. Women aren’t property that you can sulk and cry about until returned to your safekeeping, as if the big lads have stolen your football. Piano-playing is blackmail. Bunches of flowers are blackmail. All grand gestures done in the name of rekindling love are little more than murky manipulation, and by this argument Clinton Cards should be closed down tomorrow for being a misogynist’s Mecca.

Meanwhile, many men saw the rumpus over Howard as symbolic of everything wrong with modern women. They want to be wooed, but only on their exact terms. If it’s not to their suiting, then, bang, you’re a potential rapist or at the very least a lecher. How can a modern man even prove he’s crazily in love if he can’t act a little bit, well, crazy? Why do these modern feminazis take the fun out of everything?

As the internet discussed Luke Howard, with commenters chipping in from all over the planet, there was one voice dramatically missing: Rapunzel herself. Naturally, many said she didn’t exist in the first place and this whole farce was just a PR stunt for Howard’s musical career. Personally, it wouldn’t surprise me if the piano seat is now sitting silently because the couple are enjoying the fuss at home together. Because the only thing more frustrating than seemingly earnest, ostensibly charming but ultimately irritating men like Luke Howard is that there’s no shortage of women who’ll take them back constantly.