Stephen Fry to Quit Twitter?

I spotted a tweet this afternoon from legendary actor, pundit and tech geek Stephen Fry that brought a disappointed frown to my face.

“Think I may have to give up on Twitter. Too much aggression and unkindness around. Pity. Well, it’s been fun.” Fry said.

Clearly Fry feels he’s been on the end of some pretty harsh comments of late, and while that may be the case, the tweet that triggered off the comment came from @Brumplum and was hardly enough to trigger this level of a response.

@Brumplum’s initial tweet:

“@JimJamming I underdstand @stephenfry’s tweets but, much as I admire and adore the chap, they are a bit… boring…. (sorry Stephen)”

After Stephen Fry doing his best to respond to the comment, his usual wit and sharpness sadly didn’t prevail today. His response, albeit might have been taken with a dash of sarcasm:

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“@brumplum You’ve convinced me. I’m obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone.”

After a few minutes and an obvious outcry from many of Fry’s 900,000+ followers, his response:

“Well maybe I’ll see how I feel in a few days. Very low and depressed at the moment and any drop of meanness makes it so much worse. Sorry.”

Now you may wonder why this all matters. Well, aside from yet another celebrity abandoning the service (yes, Miley Cyrus is still a celebrity). Fry has always been a great advocate of the service, appearing on many an interview promoting Twitter. He’s appeared on the BBC homepage on more than one occasion and without question played a pivotal role in the UK becoming Twitter’s capital city.

For him to abandon the service is sure to trigger the British media, who are notoriously aggressive, to question the service after the months of incredible free publicity Twitter’s has received.

While Twitter has proved itself to be a incredible resource for breaking news and consensus, for celebrities…it isn’t for the thin skinned. While it provides an immediate connection to their fans, it also works vice versa and celebrities are told first hand what people think of them hand – and it isn’t always pretty.

On a personal note, I would like nothing more than to see Fry hang in there. Blocks are there for a reason but admittedly are not capable of blocking everything. On a final note, @Brumplum did end up apologising.

Want to show him some love, Twitter’s already started a hashtag #savestephen