Bob CollinsEvery new day is another chance to lose faith in humanity.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) December 3, 2015
When Twitter was still in its infancy, David Javerbaum, a comedy writer, realized its power for parody. So he created a Twitter account for God.
More than two million followers — and one following — later, he’s done.
“It’s been taking up too much of my time and energy and mental agility,” he tells American Public Media’s KPCC. “And I have other things that I want to do in my life and I just have to, at a certain point, just cut that cord. And the point was this weekend.”
David Bowie was the God I always wanted to be.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) January 11, 2016
His decision was triggered by the account getting hacked by an apparent supporter of Donald Trump, he says, but also by the decision of comedian and actor Stephen Fry to close his account. Twitter had gone all Twitter on Fry after he told a joke it didn’t like.
Oh goodness, what fun twitter was in the early days, a secret bathing-pool in a magical glade in an enchanted forest. It was glorious ‘to turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping.’ We frolicked and water-bombed and sometimes, in the moonlight, skinny-dipped. We chattered and laughed and put the world to rights and shared thoughts sacred, silly and profane. But now the pool is stagnant. It is frothy with scum, clogged with weeds and littered with broken glass, sharp rocks and slimy rubbish. If you don’t watch yourself, with every move you’ll end up being gashed, broken, bruised or contused. Even if you negotiate the sharp rocks you’ll soon feel that too many people have peed in the pool for you to want to swim there any more. The fun is over.
“A stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous who love to second-guess, to leap to conclusions and be offended – worse, to be offended on behalf of others they do not even know,” Fry said, getting it exactly right.
Javerbaum is under no illusion that he won’t miss Twitter.
“You tweet something and immediately you see people retweeting it and it feels like, ‘Oh, you have made people laugh. You have caused people to react.’ And it’s a rush,” he said.
Heroin is also a rush, he noted, and after awhile, Twitter, like heroin, becomes problematic.
