Twitter is a privilege. Not only can we share whatever thoughts pop into our head at will, but the openness of the platform allows our favorite athletes, actors, and musicians to interact and engage directly with their fans. Like any privilege, though, you can lose it by behaving badly. That’s what has happened with Ed Sheeran: He got tired of the abuse he received on Twitter, so now, he’s done with it.
Sheeran recently told The Sun:
“I’ve actually come off Twitter completely. I can’t read it. I go on it and there’s nothing but people saying mean things. Twitter’s a platform for that. One comment ruins your day. But that’s why I’ve come off it. The headf**k for me has been trying to work out why people dislike me so much.”
He added that he doesn’t need online trolls to keep his ego in check: “I have people like my dad who will have a conversation with me,” he said. “I don’t have to have someone calling me a whatever.”
His account, which has over 19 million followers, remains active, but looking at posts from the past month or so, they’re mostly either automatically posted Instagram links or promotional tweets of some sort. It seems that Instagram is Sheeran’s social media platform of choice, considering he posts on it at least every few days, and sometimes multiple times a day, as he did today with a holiday-themed shot:
It’s easy to be toxic online to celebrities you’ll never meet, and while Sheeran probably doesn’t put too much stock into what a specific Twitter user thinks, as a collective, the mean comments add up. So, let’s be nicer to everybody, Ed Sheeran or otherwise.
