Trump’s Twitter Account Disappeared For Three Minutes And The Internet Lost Its Mind
Where were you when Trump's Twitter went down?
If you need another parable illustrating the toxicity of social media in this day and age, look no further: this morning, Trump’s Twitter account disappeared for literally three minutes, sparking massive chaos online before it turned out that actually nothing had happened.
Because I spend extraordinary amounts of time glued to Twitter, I witnessed this entire dramatic saga run its course. Here’s the play-by-play no one asked for.
The Beginning Of The End
It was a sunny 9:57 am in Sydney, or an equally sunny 3:57 pm in Washington, when someone sounded the alarm.
That tweeter was Jamie Ross of BuzzFeed Scotland, a subset of BuzzFeed I’ve never had to actually consider before now. While presumably casually scrolling the timeline, Ross stumbled across this:
What. Donald Trump's Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, has gone. pic.twitter.com/EUNHvfXHhn
— Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) November 2, 2017
It’s also possible that someone who is not Jamie Ross found this first, however we’re writing some #fakenews right now and this is the tweet I saw, so let’s go with it.
Basically, visiting Trump’s Twitter page just yielded a “sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” — the most exciting five words one could ever hope to find on @realDonaldTrump. Which led people to wonder…
Is It On??
Very quickly, the internet went fucking berserk. In the space of about three minutes, Ross’s tweet amassed almost 100 retweets, and spawned hundreds of hopeful/desperate/celebratory responses. Here’s a sample:
Has it finally happened? pic.twitter.com/W2MDXGmN48
— Ben Palmer ?? (@palmersaurusrex) November 2, 2017
sooooooooo pic.twitter.com/tF3tBrY1st
— David Mack (@davidmackau) November 2, 2017
Has Trump deleted his twitter account?
— Lucy Carter (@lucethoughts) November 2, 2017
ahahahahahahaha trump banned by twitter? please god let it be so
— Kimberley Ramplin (@Kimbo_Ramplin) November 2, 2017
I can definitely imagine Trump accidentally deleting his account, in the same way I can imagine him accidentally starting a nuclear war
— Sabine Wolff (@sabinewolff) November 2, 2017
Narrator: It Was, In Fact, Not On
Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. On the third minute, @realDonaldTrump rose again to crush the people’s hopes and dreams. Blink, take a bathroom break, or log off, and you’d have missed it.
Here’s a snapshot of dreams being shattered in real time:
Oh wait it's back. As you were.
— Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) November 2, 2017
goddamn it. well, now we all know how la la land felt
— demi adejuyigbe (@electrolemon) November 2, 2017
can't believe twitter suspended @realDonaldTrump but not all those naz- oh nevermind
— ed (@macaulaybalkan) November 2, 2017
I went to the bathroom and missed Good Twitter. :-(
— Tony Broderick ? (@brod) November 2, 2017
"so you go into 'settings & privacy' and then down the bottom there's the option to deactivate his account" pic.twitter.com/pT6eAshXCa
— mat whitehead (@matwhi) November 2, 2017
"Trump's twitter was reactivated before I could tweet my good gif," she yells at a radioactive slug moments before the earth is destroyed. pic.twitter.com/VscZlA3VVe
— Jen Lewis (@thisjenlewis) November 2, 2017
The Part Of The Story With Some Actual Answers
Until like two minutes ago this part of the story was total speculation, but we now have some answers thanks to the good people at Twitter Government. In short, they’re claiming “human error by a Twitter employee”, which sounds suspiciously like some fucking legend seized a golden opportunity to do what we all wish we could.
Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
As this legend responded:
Please don’t… And give that employee a raise
— Burt McGirt (@xBurtMcGirtx) 3 November 2017
If the Twitter employee responsible ends up reading this story by some miracle, please get in touch.
The Moral Of The Story
In a sentence? Log the fuck off.
We’ll all remember where we were during the 10 minutes of peace while Donald Trump’s Twitter account was down.
— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) November 2, 2017