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Disaster for Twitter: John Mayer quits

Despite enjoying 3.7 million followers, the erudite singer decides to shut his Twitter account and, perhaps, spend more time on Tumblr.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Could it be that the shark has been leaped over and left for dead? Has Twitter suddenly become passe?

This is the question of moment because of some utterly painful news for the state of microblogging. John Mayer, he of the curly locks and associations with desirable women, has shut his Twitter doors and hung out his whale.

According to Yahoo Music, Mayer has decided to leave behind his 3.7 million followers and strum off into the sunset.

Naturally, theories abound as to why this mercurial figure has taken such a draconian step. Yahoo reminds us that Mayer did happen to say earlier this year: "I just think Twitter as a form of communication, I think it's over to be honest with you."

A shot from Mayer's Tumblr compendium. Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

The suggestion is that Mayer became tired of negative tweets hurled in his direction. But he was such a vibrant and lucid presence on the site, one of its anchors, its pillars of wisdom. Indeed, it was to Twitter he turned in order to explain why he used the N-word in an interview with Playboy.

Baring himself at the time, he tweeted: "And it's such a shame that I did because the point I was trying to make was in the exact opposite spirit of the word itself. It was arrogant of me to think I could intellectualize using it because I realize that there's no intellectualizing a word that is so emotionally charged."

How he raised Twitter's intellectual level. This is the man who compared sex with Jessica Simpson to napalm. Did Simpson's ex-husband, Nick Lachey, ever offer such observations?

Rumor has it that Mayer is now far more enchanted with Tumblr, where he explained his new addiction this way: "It's one of those things you do all the time but isn't all that bad for you. Well, except for those two "artful" nudie Tumblr sites I follow...they slow my productivity down a bit..."

Millions will now feel denuded at Mayer's disappearance from Twitter.

There will be those who will compare this departure to a time, three years ago, when Mayer was seen to dump Applefor BlackBerry. But one wonders whether this drastic news will lead to a mass Twitter exodus of the great, the good, and even the slightly mediocre.

What will we be left with? Kanye West?