This week the world has gone crazy about the possibility that Elon Musk will mount a hostile takeover of Twitter. Here’s my Twitter story. I can’t prove any of it because of course Twitter will say nothing. But Elon, if you’re reading this – save me!

It was May of 2020, early in the pandemic. As a senior I was in lockdown here in Negros Oriental. Back then, idiot that I was, I actually listened to the powers that be and spent that month never leaving my house.

I was bored of course, bored out of my mind. I’d played guitar for hours, surfed the net, watched YouTube. I was running out of distractions. I was so desperate – I logged onto Twitter.

Now to explain: I’ve been a Twitter member for maybe 6 years or so, but I never tweet. Frankly I have never seen the great fascination with the platform. Literally the only times I’d ever tweeted regarded this very blog. The blogging platform I use, WordPress, has an automated link so that when you complete a blog post, it automatically creates a tweet which posts a link to my latest blog. That is literally it; the only times I have ever tweeted.

So I go to my Twitter account as if entering a new house. Then I looked at the list of who I was following. To my shock and horror I was following Hilary Clinton. I knew that there is not enough booze in the world to get me drunk enough to follow her. So, I removed her. There were 6 or 8 more political and media figures that I was following that I knew I would have never subscribed to. So again I removed my follows. A total of no more than 10 were removed.

Then I made the mistake that will haunt me forever. I thought, ‘now that I have deleted these clowns, maybe I should subscribe to the guy whose tweets I hear often – but hear second hand. And so on that fateful day I subscribed to @therealdonaldtrump. And with that I logged off.

24 or 36 hours passed and I was still bored to death. I logged onto Twitter thinking, ‘let’s see what wild things my new friend has said today.’ And there it was – a message on my home page saying that I was suspended.

What happened, I wondered. What had I done. Paranoia said, ‘You unfollowed Hilary – you’re toast.’ Or worse yet, ‘you followed Trump – you’re burnt toast.’

I tried to find anywhere to get customer service on the platform to address the issue or at least to find out what I had done wrong. There was nothing.

I looked it up on the Internet and sure enough I found a link to a Twitter form for trying to get reinstated. I filled out the form stating that I was aware of nothing that I had done wrong and to please explain or reinstate me. When I clicked to submit the form, I got an automated email stating that they had received my appeal and would respond as soon as possible. “Soon as possible” apparently is Twitter code for “never.”

A few months went by and I replied to their email asking for an update. Crickets.

Under the category of “Dave is unusually patient and trusting,” after a year I thought that I should file the form again just in case it fell through the cracks. The election was over; surely I’d been punished enough. I got an immediate automated email that the form could not be submitted since I still had a pending case – a freaking year later!

It’s not like I missed Twitter. As I said I had hardly ever used it. But the thought that I might have been suspended because of the follows I had removed or the 1 I had added annoyed the hell out of me.

So Elon – please look into this and let me back in!

After the Elon announcement I again logged onto Twitter. The message was now that I had been permanently suspended. I had never received a response to my reinstatement form. The suspension allows me to read what is there but not to tweet or edit anything. I am listed as no longer following anyone nor is anyone following me. I am a man without a country or a platform.

Here’s what’s interesting. Now when I look I see a list of my tweets all of which are former blog postings. Except for the last one. I am positive it was not there before; a fake ad for RayBan sunglasses. Could I have been suspended permanently because of this one phony tweet? Could I have been hacked? Possibly. I suspect Hilary – or Trump 🙂