UPDATE: July 20, 9 a.m. ― Ed Sheeran stands fully behind his “Game of Thrones” appearance, much like the episode’s director, and says critics had nothing to do with his brief disappearance from Twitter.
In a caption posted Wednesday to his apparently preferred social platform, Instagram, the singer partially addressed the situation, failing to mention his scores of deleted tweets:
Last i’ll say on this. I came off Twitter Coz I was always intending to come off Twitter, had nothing to do with what people said about my game of thrones cameo, because I am in game of thrones, why the hell would I worry what people thought about that. It’s clearly fuckin’ awesome. Timing was just a coincidence, but believe what you want.
UPDATE: July 18, 1:50 p.m. ― The plot thickens as Ed Sheeran restored his Twitter account Tuesday, less than a day after seemingly retreating from the site for good.
Yet Sheeran’s account is but a shadow of its former self: Only tweets posted between May 2014 and April 2015 are available, and his follower count has been slashed to a mere 6,636 at press time, from over 19 million. The “problemEDic” posts from 2010 to 2012 featured in a recent BuzzFeed article are among the deleted.
HuffPost contacted the singer’s representatives pleading for some kind of explanation but did not immediately receive a response.
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Ah, a mystery: Why did Ed Sheeran just delete his Twitter account?
Sheeran made the move on Monday, just one day after his “Game of Thrones” cameo as a singing Lannister soldier earned a mixed, but mostly unimpressed, response from fans of the HBO hit on the social media platform.
It also happened just a few hours after BuzzFeed published a list of “24 Tweets Ed Sheeran Will Probably Delete Soon,” culled from the depths of the musician’s Twitter timeline.
Joke’s on them, we suppose ― he just deleted the whole account.
Many of the posts revealed Sheeran’s less-than-enlightened, five-to-seven-year-old opinions on gender alongside unsubtle thoughts on actress Mila Kunis. Writer Matt Stopera curated the list after Twitter users dug up a 2012 post from the “Shape of You” singer that criticized music by Kesha, who recently released her first new solo material in five years. Sheeran deleted the Kesha tweet last week, but left other missives:
“Men getting ready is throwing on a t shirt, underwear and jeans. Women, please learn from this, it shouldn’t take an hour to dry your hair,” he tweeted in January 2012.
“Also, since not drinking, I’ve gone from a medium to a small. God I sounded like a woman there....” he wrote in February 2011.
“Giiiirrrrrllls I fuck with theeeeem,” read a message from November 2010.
Sheeran has become the subject of criticism by some who argue his “nice guy” exterior masks an interior misogyny. He addressed the idea of leaving Twitter earlier this month, after claiming he’d had enough of “the negative stuff” directed his way on the platform. Later, the singer clarified that he hadn’t quit Twitter, he’d just stopped reading replies.
Now, he’s done both. At press time, he still maintains an Instagram account.
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