We lost someone special when the journalist and writer Simon Ricketts died just over four months ago. He was a 24-carat mensch. A living antidote to cruelty and heartlessness. An astonishing comet of kindness blazing across social media’s dark night skies, indiscriminately brightening the lives of everyone. His wasn’t the first high-profile death at our end of Twitter, but it was the hardest.

“Our end” – you know the end I mean. The older end. The flexitarian, smartarse, squabbling, umbrage-taking, performatively progressive end. The rainbow end. The herbivore lunch with an Armagnac at the end.

In Twitter’s shrieking agora, Simon’s voice rose above the others because it was quieter. He was the straight-up, decent bloke from Watford who would chat trivial, upbeat drivel with anyone: all through his cancer treatment, the grim operations, through to the end. Every encounter with him left you, against the odds, feeling better about yourself. He would have been 51 on Friday, and on that day people are coming together to celebrate the everyday kindnesses he dealt out to us all.

Simon’s fame was pretty much made on social media and that’s where his death resonated, among people who largely only knew him – and indeed each other – online. What, then, is the protocol for mourning someone you have never met? I mean, when Prince and Bowie and all the others went, Our End of Twitter was aglow with grief. People consoling one another, sharing music and memories. A shameless, blurted lurch of blubbed community bereavement.

His funeral was rammed. It was like being at a Rolling Stones concert in 1968, except everyone was teary and desolate

Oh, and remember the pushback? Those brittle, wintry-hearted commentators telling us all to sit up straight, to stop snivelling like spanked children, to pull ourselves together. We’d never met Mr Bowie, he was not a personal acquaintance, all this “virtual grief” was unseemly. “Stop moping, you bedwetters, oh my God you’re crying now?” Yes, I am being hurtful: you’d be surprised how many people are aroused by cruelty. Honestly, this stuff just writes itself, often behind a paywall …

We found out in January what the protocol was for mourning “someone you knew only on Twitter”. His funeral was rammed. A massive shuffling crowd, 3D avatar versions of his scribbly-texty online followers. Introducing ourselves, comforting each other, sort of knowing who we all were, connected by the absence at the centre of it all. Standing room in the gallery. Some of us sitting on the floor, unable to see a thing, grateful just to hear what was going on. It was like being at a Rolling Stones concert in 1968, except everyone was teary and desolate and there weren’t any spliffs going round.

I asked people for anecdotes about Simon. Boom. Consensus: “the nicest bloke I never met”. Tons of stories, each unique, but always, always “kindness” the watermark. The married couple who got together after replying to a Simon tweet. The strength he gave someone going through chemo at the same time as he was (a running theme, this – his concern for other people’s health, his cheerful support even when he was trundling towards death himself). A thoughtful letter to someone’s child. His frankly unacceptable puns (“I’m giving up cheap chocolate for Lindt”). Once, out of the blue on a whim, he hired a car and turned up on a Twitter mate’s doorstep in the west of Ireland. His obsession with checking the compass on his phone. How ironic – he was one.

Simon Ricketts in hospital: ‘Vomit bowls still make funny hats. Even now. Doesn’t matter how many times you put one on your head, it is still a winner. That’s a medical fact.’

Simon’s obituary could have come from the last century. Watford-born, raised, lived and died. Local hack to news editor to national paper to the Guardian night news team – his dream job. Crucially, he was also a subeditor, a craft barely understood by non-journalists these days and much diminished by the rise of online news. The subeditor’s job is to take the piece with which they are presented and make the best of it. Correcting, tidying, polishing, headlining. That’s what Simon did. If you were depressed or ill and confided in him, he would put a snappy intro on it, give it plenty of topspin, cut it down a bit, put a tail on it – “Only time will tell” – bosh, done. Right, down the imaginary pub.

I met him only once. A little Twitter gang of us took him and Andrea, his partner, to lunch. Despite his illness, he was convivial and kind and just so glad to be alive. In a rare example of thoughtlessness, the inconsiderate bastard died before we could do it again. On Friday there’s a memorial for Simon at St Bride’s in Fleet Street, London – the old journalists’ church where, traditionally, venerated hacks are seen off. Then on to a nearby pub, where Simon will no doubt be “banged out” – the traditional newspaper farewell – and the more old-fashioned, fanciful and pissed of us will imagine a glorious soul aloft, crowd-surfing on a wave of boozy noise.

Simon’s craft was an old one, but the last blazing years of his life were pure 21st century. He was a Twitter folk hero. So from 6pm this Friday, 17 May 2019, we’re raising our glasses to Simon on his birthday and posting pictures on Twitter, tagged #CheersSimon. Please join us. It’ll be a toast to his memory, but also a general celebration of the good in us all. Here’s to him, and to us, and to kindness.

The fee for this article will be donated to Bowel Cancer UK, Simon Ricketts’ nominated charity