JOE’s Top Five Twitter Quitters

Ryan Tubridy can't take the criticism, Stephen Fry had a huff and Miley finished with it altogether - just who are the Twitter quitters and why?

By Emmet Purcell

As perhaps the most infamous source of racist sportsmen scandals and meaningless breakfast updates, Twitter is a powerful and dangerous tool. For many celebrity twitterers, however, the level of stardom and widespread can become too much.

Ryan Tubridy has recently said that he feels his Twitter account is “not worth the grief” after receiving tons of negative feedback after each Late Late Show broadcast. If our dear R-Tubz can’t handle the scrunity of thousands or even millions of twitterati hanging on his every word, what hope is there for giants of the micro-blogging site such as the multi-talented Kim Kardashian or artist of our generation Justin Bieber? A Tubridy departure would be another blow to his legions of followers but as you’ll see below, numerous influential Tweeters have long left the site or at least threatened to.

1. Miley Cyrus - discontinued

For legal reasons, we can’t say much more about Miley Cyrus until her 18th birthday on November 23, but suffice to say, she’s a lovely supple and well-developed lady. Once a towering twitizen, Miley deleted her account in October 2009 at the behest of her then-boyfriend Liam Hemsworth, leaving behind a particularly poignant message of farewell with typically nuanced clarity:

“FYI Liam doesn’t have a twttr & he wants ME 2 delete mine w/ gd reason”

In Miley’s absence, however, a hatful of Hannah Montana fans have created their own ‘back up twitter’ pages and pretended to be the singer/actress, for no apparent reason or financial gain whatsoever. This one even has over 170,000 followers. Ah well, we suppose it’s better than nothing… actually hold on, it’s clearly a pointless exercise and downright creepy.

2. Stephen Fry - @STEPHENFRY

Fry was miffed at the reaction to his Attitude magazine interview

Ludicrously popular and infallible internet demigod Stephen Fry recently flew off the handle over claims that the writer and broadcaster made to gay magazine Attitude had been taken out of context and misinterpreted. Fry had told the magazine that he felt women only slept with men because it was ‘the price they are willing to pay for a relationship.” On October 31 Fry then stunned his 1.9m followers with the following tweet, which preceded a simple ‘Bye bye’ message minutes later:

“So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I'm the Antichrist. I give up.”

Sure enough, Fry couldn’t stay away and posted a link to an extensive blog four days later, in which he stated “I can truly report that I know and love enough women to be quite assured of the fact that women do indeed enjoy sex.” The Twitter conqueror was back to his old self, tweeting “I Luv You Aston!! <3 No1 JLS And Aston Fan!! Aston I Luv U To Bits!” to his army of fans. Actually, we may have misquoted Fry on that last tweet, but either way - he's back.

3. John Mayer - discontinued

Occasional singer-songwriter and full-time celebrity love machine, John Mayer left his 3.7m Twitter fans in September, choosing instead to update his followers through his official blog instead. Mayer actually told Yahoo Music "I just think Twitter as a form of communication, I think it's over to be honest with you." Mayer’s statement coincides with Prince’s recent statement that “The Internet is over”. Which do you think is more over, the internet or Twitter? Tweet JOE and let us know here. Or don't and prove them right.

4. Courtney Love - @CourtneyLoveUK

Professional absolute mess Courtney Love has amassed 74,000 misguided followers since joining Twitter, all of whom enjoy her endless retweets and out of focus iPhone shots. In July, however, the Hole singer threatened to close her account, after she had 'accidentally' posted a scantily-clad photo of herself onto her account. Love claims that the picture was intended for her boyfriend and later tweeted:

"I'm off twitter, that photo was meant for a boyfriend"

A few hours later, unfazed by the incident or possibly just sober, Love continued her account as if nothing had ever happened, and unfortunately did not have the good decency to remove the offending picture in the first place.

5. Robbie Savage - @RobbieSavage8

The surprising saviour of footballer tweets

It’s hard to imagine how a man that has a tattoo of the Armani logo could be anything other than a complete tosser, but Derby County midfielder Robbie Savage is without doubt the most entertaining tweeting footballer today.

In a world of professionally managed PR twaddle (Cristiano Ronaldo’s page), mystifying arrogance (Liverpool’s occasional benchwarmer Ryan Babel) or tedious ‘banter’ merchants (Rio Ferdinand), Savage is a genuinely funny and occasionally insightful tweeter. Thus it was with a heavy heart that the Welsh international announced his Twitter retirement… for about five minutes. Thank god, here’s one of our favourite Savage retorts to the profoundly irritating Rio.

@rioferdy5 - Looking forward to 75,000+ roaring at old trafford 2mo, what a feeling… where u playin 2mo?

@RobbieSavage8 To be fair pal I’d rather have 30,000 fans from derby than 15,000 from Manchester and the rest from ??????