Twitter Suspended My Account For Quite Possibly The Dumbest Reason In The History Of The Internet
Hey guy, Austin here. You might not remember who I am after almost 24 hours of not tweeting to consistently remind the 4,000+ of you who follow me that I still exist (which I’m pretty sure is the only reason why any of us tweet). But the reason for my absence from my favorite social media app is because the app told me I had to sit in timeout. Why? Because I tweeted something that encouraged suicide and promoted self-harm. Pretty on-brand for me, amirite? Typical Austin. Just always walking around telling people to hurt themselves and/or jump off roofs. So naturally, you can probably see why Twitter would head-hunt me.
Wait, I’m sorry, never mind. I’m not a dick. At least I don’t think I am. In fact, I put more effort into trying to not be a dick than I do telling people to punch themselves in the face and/or drop a cinder block on their head. So when I first was informed that my account was suspended, I was a little confused. Flabergasted, even. What could I have tweeted that Twitter (or some random stranger) was so offended by that it go my entire account shut down?
A little backstory on the evening: Monday night was not the greatest night of my life. As a Mizzou grad, you can imagine I was rooting hard against the red-leggers of kansas. I don’t like them. I don’t like them one bit. The first half was fun as hell, but then somewhere along the line during halftime, UNC decided to revert back into the UNC that lost to Pitt (sorry, A.D. – H2P always). They coughed up the lead and the alma mater of Jordan got Crying Jordan’d. And kansas cheated their way to – wait, sorry – won themselves another national championship (with big thanks to adidas). So naturally, I was pretty upset. I was debating about what to tweet to show my disdain and overall sadness over the matter. Initially, I was going to tweet this…
But I did not tweet that. Mainly because I felt it was a little aggressive for that game. Especially for a sport that nobody watches the regular season for. Plus, I felt it could send the wrong message and I wouldn’t want Twitter to flag my account for encouraging suicide and/or promoting self-harm.
So instead, I went with a pretty vanilla, extremely over-used Nicolas Cage GIF.
Yup, admittedly pretty lame. Not my best. But I was not in the mood to give my best. Now was this the tweet I got flagged for? No. The tweet I got suspended for was much, much dumber.
So as the evening continued and Bill Self’s botox glistened in the light as he climbed his Werner ladder to cut down the nets (again with massive thanks to adidas), a few tweets slid into my mentions, including this one from my dear friend, occasional mentor, former co-worker, former boss, and former drummer of the iconic American rock band The Black Crowes, Steve Gorman.
Look, you can tweet a lot of things at me that I’ll let slide, but when you try and lump me in with those made-up birds is where I draw the line. So I tweeted back snarkily (if you want to call it that) to Steve. As you can tell from the picture below, there is a tweet missing from the conversation.
That tweet would be mine. A tweet that apparently violated the Twitter Rules. So what is it? Why am I dragging this out worse than Seacrest hosting Idol? Well, I’ll tell you………….. after this commercial break.
No, I’ll tell you now.
That’s it. That’s the tweet.
That’s the tweet that made Twitter say enough is enough. Within literal minutes of me tweeting it. Never mind the constant ACTUAL harassment that goes on their platform every single day with no penalty. No, it was me telling my friend to eat a pile of dirt that got the suspension. Now granted, I did say a massive pile. Is that the deal-breaker? Does Twitter have a limit on dirt-eating that they will allow on their website? If I told Steve to eat a small-to-medium-sized pile of dirt would I still be around to tweet right now? Who knows? All I know is telling someone to eat a massive pile of dirt now consists of “encouraging suicide and/or promoting self-harm.” In my defense, the massive pile of dirt could (and should) be considered relative. To ants, an anthill is considered a massive pile of dirt. But to a human, that’s not much dirt at all. What if I was telling Steve to eat an anthill? What if Steve was an ant? What if I substituted the dirt with the always much more nutrient-enriched soil? What if I added the word “cup?” Could this have all been avoided? Because then I would just be encouraging my friend to enjoy a late-night tasty treat.
Hell, whatever happened to the saying “God made dirt, and dirt don’t hurt”? Do those Silicon Valley heathens not abide by that rule? Because that could be exhibit A in the court case against my suspension. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Twitter tried to claim my client was encouraging self-harm by telling someone to eat a massive pile of dirt, but according to the age-old adage, ‘God made dirt, and dirt don’t hurt.'” Pretty rock-solid defense, in my opinion.
Twitter allowed me to accept the punishment which would’ve resulted in a 12-hour suspension. However, I’m pretty sure that would’ve also counted as a strike against my account. And I don’t even want to get close to getting kicked off Twitter. For one, it’s my favorite social media site. And plus, I’d rather not be forced to go to Parler with Aubrey Huff, Donnie T., and whoever else is on there. I just like Twitter. So I appealed the suspension to try and keep my record clean. Well, now that appeal is still pending. And here I am blogging about the whole thing as some sort of coping mechanism. Is this what people did before 2009? I honestly can’t remember. Meanwhile, my thumb is twitching every 3-second as if I’m still refreshing the timeline.
With Kansas winning and me getting Twitter revoked you might wonder if this is the worst 24-hours of my life? Probably not. My sweet 95-year-old grandmother and Regis Philbin passed away pretty close together, which was rougher than not being able to tweet. But this is definitely a close second. Anyway, this blog ended up being much longer than I intended, but let my situation be a lesson to you all. Never, and I mean NEVER, under any circumstances tell ANYONE to eat a massive pile on Twitter, or else your account will be shut down within minutes.
Please, share this blog on Twitter to get the word out that dirt-eating is a non-player on Twitter dot com, as I am unable to do. God speed to you all.
Except Steve. You can still eat a massive pile of dirt.
tl;dr: don’t tell anyone on Twitter to eat massive piles of dirt
