Twitter has lost another great. Joss Whedon has left the social media site, and geeks will likely mourn his departure just about as much as they grieved over Damon Lindelof”s. (Okay, guys, Lindelof is divisive in the geeksphere, but, man, did he kill at Twitter.)
Visit the URL for Whedon”s account now, and you”re met with a “Sorry, that page doesn”t exist!” message. His last tweet, apparently, was sent out around 12 p.m. EST today and said, “Thank you to all the people who”ve been so kind and funny and inspiring up in here.”
Whedon leaves Twitter right after “Avengers: Age of Ultron” had its massive U.S. opening weekend. He joined Twitter as @JossWhedon in May 2013 shortly before his “Much Ado About Nothing” adaptation hit theaters, after first tweeting from the @MuchAdoFilm account. The timing could suggest that having fulfilled his Twitter-related duties for the “Ultron” opening, Whedon may have felt free to now abandon the platform.
HitFix has reached out to Whedon”s representation for comment. We”ll update you if we hear back.
UPDATE, May 6, 11:04 a.m. ET: Whedon spoke to BuzzFeed News about his reasoning for leaving Twitter, first addressing theories that have been tossed around the Internet over the past day that he left the social media platform due to militant feminists' angry reactions to Black Widow”s portrayal in “Age of Ultron.”
“That is horses–t,” Whedon said. “Believe me, I have been attacked by militant feminists since I got on Twitter. That”s something I”m used to. Every breed of feminism is attacking every other breed, and every subsection of liberalism is always busy attacking another subsection of liberalism, because God forbid they should all band together and actually fight for the cause.”
He explained that he quit Twitter to allow himself to focus more on his personal life and writing. “I just thought, ‘Wait a minute, if I”m going to start writing again, I have to go to the quiet place. And [Twitter] is the least quiet place I”ve ever been in my life,”” he said.
Will Whedon ever rejoin Twitter? He said that he”d consider it but hopes he can find what he got out of Twitter (lots of great jokes, for one) in other places. You can read more about what the “Avengers” director had to say about Twitter and militant feminists in the BuzzFeed News post.