Ed Sheeran’s great music speaks for itself, but did you know that he’s also too precious and sensitive for this world?
Well, too much for Twitter, anyway.
He says that he’s done with the social media platform … because people are being too mean.
“I’ve actually come off Twitter completely. I can’t read it.”
Ed Sheeran explains that he quit Twitter because he couldn’t stand the vile comments anymore.
“I go on it and there’s nothing but people saying mean things.”
He’s probably not talking about the quasi-universal experience of going on Twitter and getting the occasional bit of hate.
He’s a celebrity, so he’s not talking about the occasional nasty tweet about a political event.
For someone of Ed Sheeran’s level of fame, we’re talking about endless vitriol because countless people tweet at him on a daily basis.
So a chunk of that is going to be hateful, and if he keeps checking his mentions, he’s going to see a lot of nasty things.
“The head-f–k for me has been trying to work out why people dislike me so much.”
The thing is that people probably don’t dislike him.
So if someone tweets that, like, “he looks like pubes” or whatever, they’re probably just joking about him because he’s a celebrity and they don’t really expect him to see it.
A bigger factor, of course, is trolls.
Trolls love to get a negative reaction because it makes them feel better about themselves.
So of course they’d love to hear that they really get under his skin.
And it sounds like it absolutely does.
“One comment ruins your day.”
That’s kind of interesting, considering the optimistic image that he projects.
Taylor Swift herself has talked about his unfailing innocence:
She said that Sheeran is: “protected by an impenetrable and ever-present armor of enthusiasm that has helped him endure any setback, letdown or underestimation.”
But Twitter can wear you down.
Not because of anything inherent to Twitter except that it connects people.
It’s people who can wear you down.
Give them a hint of anonymity and a connection to someone famous and they’ll just go off.
To be clear, there are absolutely countermeasures that people can take if they’re being bullied online.
And we don’t mean “just getting off of the internet.”
If drivers on the road are unsafe, you can’t just advise people to “get off the road.”
They need to go on the road to live their lives.
The same is true of using the internet.
For a lot of more sensitive celebs, avoiding seeing hate just means not checking their mentions.
Non-celebrities can always just lock their accounts.
Actually, Olivia Newton-John’s daughter Chloe Lattanzi’s locked her account on Instagram.
So celebs can do it, too, though most wouldn’t take that option.
Then there’s always the option of having an assistant tweet on your behalf as if it were you.
But while there’s no real way of knowing exactly how many stars tweet for themselves, it’s pretty clear that they need PR skills and thick skin to be successful on Twitter.
Not everybody gets to be Chrissy Teigen. Sadly.
Now, Ed Sheeran’s social media accounts aren’t going to vanish into the night or whatever.
His Instagram account will keep automatically generating tweets.
That’s kind of an extreme move, and you can’t help but feel sorry that he felt that it was necessary.
Kind of makes you wonder what happened with Melania Trump’s vow to combat cyberbullying, huh?