Logging onto Twitter and seeing about two thousand of my followers suddenly gone was what it must feel like when a parent turns around and their child isn’t following them through a shopping mall any longer.
Also, that is probably extremely dramatic, but I loved looking at my nearly eight thousand followers and knowing that, among them, maybe some person out there was enjoying my nonsense.
Imagine my dismay the moment I logged on to Twitter today, only to discover that suddenly my follower count dropped faster than my energy levels when I see the heat index. Now, I am hardly the only one to suffer. Going into the great Twitter purge, users knew what would come of our follower counts when the big sweep took hold. Twitter was taking action to eliminate so-called “locked” accounts, accounts that were locked in the past for displaying spammy or bot-like activity.
My number of followers before the upcoming Twitter purge and after 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/iZPFEgDasb
— McNeil (@Reflog_18) July 11, 2018
Clearly, we weren’t ready to say goodbye to our fake friends. “Let the bots stay, let my almost eight thousand remain,” I cried out into the void as I watched my follower count dwindle down to its current standing of less than six thousand.
In a melodramatic flair, everyone began to share their tales of woe—who had lost what amount of followers? The main concern coming from how many our Twitter-obsessed president lost in total. His current standing? Only about 100,000 bots lost. Hmm.
Katy Perry also lost quite the number of followers, proving that not even writing hit songs will keep you safe. If this is the beginning of The Purge franchise in our real lives, those of us with lots of Twitter followers will, seemingly, suffer the most. According to Variety, other famous people like myself suffered greatly:
Follower counts for Justin Bieber fell 1.3%, Rihanna was down 0.6%, Ellen DeGeneres dropped 2.5%, Taylor Swift fell 2.7%, and Lady Gaga declined 1.9%. Barack Obama’s (@barackobama) total followers shrank by 2.1 million, or 2.1%, to 101.5 million.
I have suffered during this grand Twitter purge. My pain knows no bounds
— rachel leishman (@RachelLeishman) July 12, 2018
We may never get our lost bots back. My treasured eight thousand is now much further than it was prior to this unwanted purge. At least Twitter is doing something about bot accounts that don’t do any harm rather than handling their crisis with Neo-Nazis! It’s great to see they have their priorities straight.
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