She was one of Twitter’s most high profile users, but it appears JK Rowling has kissed the twittersphere goodbye - and her 14 million followers are bereft.
She was a regular tweeter?
Hard to believe when you consider she is such a prolific author. Aside from penning the Harry Potter books, she also writes the Cormoran Strike contemporary crime fiction novels under the guise of Robert Galbraith.
But she still found time to tweet?
Since joining in August 2009, she tweeted 12,000 times.
And she has how many followers?
She is believed to have the highest twitter following of any author in the world, at around 14.6 million, many of them, naturally, ardent admirers of the boy wizard, who hang on her every word - or rather, used to.
She’s definitely left?
Ms Rowling has not deleted her account, but she hasn’t tweeted in more than five months. On March 16, she expressed her happiness over Scotland winning the Calcutta Cup….and that’s where her followers were left hanging.
And she had a hard time online before that?
She expressed her views on politics and that can be like a moth to a flame for trolls.
She criticised Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn?
Yes, and a series of tweets entitled “The Visitation of The Corbynites: A Festive Thread” in December 2018 began by criticising Corbyn supporters for personally attacking her for her own critiques of the labour leader.
What did it say?
She tweeted: “And lo, unto her did appear a host of Corbyn defenders, who did descend upon her mentions, and she was not sore afraid, because she was used to it.”
She tweeted against Trump?
She penned a few twitter take-downs of the US president and his followers. One memorable line being: “Those teeny little fingers are within twitching distance of the nuclear codes. We’re all in it, up to our necks.”
She got into a row with ex-MP Natalie McGarry?
In February 2016, Ms Rowling accepted an apology after the politician accused the author of backing a “misogynist twitter troll”. Ms Rowling then said Ms McGarry would have to apologise if she could not justify her accusation, or face legal action.
She campaigned for causes she believed in?
As the founder and president of Lumos, an international charity promoting an end to the institutionalisation of children worldwide, Ms Rowling often tweeted to promote its work.
In June last year, she referred to the separation of families at the US/Mexican border by writing of the work of Lumos, saying: “Seeing mass incarceration of young children in the us is truly shocking…#reunitefamiliesnow”.
Wasn’t there a spat over Dumbledore?
The author found herself accused of retroactively trying to insert diversity into her Harry Potter series by saying earlier this year that there was a “sexual dimension” to the relationship between head of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, and fellow wizard, Gellert Grindelwald. She then found herself the subject of many twitter memes.
So what now?
Perhaps she grew tired of the twittersphere and is focusing on her day job.
There’s still hope for the legions of fans who take to twitter to say how much they miss her, as she did change the header picture on her page in May to an image from the Hubble telescope of the Capricorn constellation, so perhaps it is all simply written in the stars.
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