Entertainment

Chris Brown, Alec Baldwin, Adele & More Stars That Quit Twitter (PHOTOS)

Twitter Quitters

From Shia LaBeouf to Ashton Kutcher, Jean Trinh and Molly Taylor round up celebrity Twitter quitters.

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Shia LaBeouf dropped Twitter after getting bullied by the public. Ashton Kutcher stopped tweeting after a controversial post on a sexual scandal. Sinead O’Connor left the Twitterverse after discussing personal mental issues. See more celebrities that have tried to kick the Twitter habit.

By Jean Trinh and Molly Taylor

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Tinseltown bad boy Shia LaBeouf received a less than a warm welcome when he recently joined Twitter. The Deputy Tech Editor of Buzzfeed, John Hermann, started a campaign called “#BlockShia”—and it went viral. Even people internationally followed suit in blocking LaBeouf, and within 12 hours, he fell off Twitter. Hermann posted the chain of events on Storify, titling it, “How I maybe, possibly, bullied Shia LaBeouf off of Twitter.”

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Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf have more in common than just being costars on the Transformers franchise—they’re also both Twitter quitters. The sultry actress and new mother joined Twitter shortly after a “RIP Megan Fox” hoax trended over the social media site. She stopped Tweeting after five days and 29 Tweets, and wrote on her Facebook page on Jan. 10, “Some of you may, or may not have noticed by now that my Twitter account has been shut down... I thought that 2013 might be the year that I finally blossomed into a social networking butterfly... but as it turns out I still hate it. Love you guys but I will just never be that girl. Facebook is as much as I can handle.”

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What doesn’t James Franco do? The actor, comedian, writer, student, and artist extraordinaire also added tweeting to his list of goals as he joined the social media site in Jan. 2011, just in time for him to handle the reigns of the Academy Awards show. And as quickly as he came, he left just a month and a half later, telling Politico in an interview that he would be cutting down on his tweeting. “My thought was ‘this is my Twitter. I can do whatever I want.’ But certain companies I work with contacted me about what I was saying.” He has since created a new Twitter account with a new handle @JamesFrancoTV.

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After a public blowout through a series of nasty Twitter exchanges with comedian Jenny Johnson on Twitter, the R&B crooner—controversially known for physically abusing his girlfriend, Rihanna—deleted his account on Nov. 25, 2012. Johnson tweeted, “I have zero respect for a person who seems unapologetic for the terrible crime he committed and shows no signs of changing.” Just one week later, Brown reactivated his account and tweeted an Instagram photo of himself sitting next to a scantily-clad RiRi covered in a camouflage blanket, as reported by ABC News. The tweet and photo mysteriously vanished from the social media sites the next day.

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Channeling one of the most memorable lines from the film Brokeback Mountain, “I wish I knew how to quit you,” is comparable to Alec Baldwin and his serial on-again-off-again affair with Twitter. The former30 Rock cast member cleared out his @AlecBalwin Twitter account in Dec. 2011, following a row with American Airlines when he refused to turn off an electronic device before taking flight, as reported by USA TODAY. A month later, he returned to Twitter, only to disappear again in July 2012, days after he wed Hilaria Thomas with the tweet, “It’s been fun.” He has since rejoined the Twitterverse by tweeting through the handle, @ABFalecbaldwin; the “ABF” stands for his non-profit, Alec Baldwin Foundation.

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“How do you fire Joe Pa?”Ashton Kutcher tweeted in Nov. 2011, in reference to the firing of former Pennsylvania State University coach Joe Paterno in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the nation. The Two and a Half Men star quickly realized his gaffe as he was lambasted by his followers and handed the reins of his account over to Katalyst Media to tweet for him, as reported in the Daily Mail.

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Some fighting matches just aren’t worth it for this Rocky star. Sylvester Stallone joined the Twitterverse in 2010, only to quit in 2012. “I used to tweet but it's an act of futility,” said Sly in an interview with British Magazine, Nuts. “You're not really making any impact. It might be a great promotional tool but just to make small talk, it's crazy.”

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Singer John Mayer called it quits after gaining nearly four million followers. The “tweetholic” left Twitter in 2010 because, “I started using Twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.” Post-Twitter, Mayer dedicated his songwriting abilities to his fifth studio album Born and Raised.

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Sinead O’Connor caused concern among her followers when she tweeted asking for help finding a psychiatrist in early 2012. The Irish singer later deleted her account, saying on her website that “Twitter is sadly not safe for people who do what I do for a living.”

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After threatening to leave a year earlier, British broadcaster Stephen Fry quit Twitter in 2010 after controversially claiming in an interview that women do not enjoy sex. Fry tweeted to his nearly 2 million followers that he was misquoted, followed by the tweet “bye, bye, bye.” But Fry didn’t stay away from Twitter too long; he reactivated his account four days later.

 

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“Twitter was a mistake. I'm leaving it behind and going outside to look at nature, then use my hands to make something. Join me. Goodbye,” tweeted Parks and Recreation star Nick Offerman in 2012. He returned to the site nine months later to, in Ron Swanson fashion, “only disseminate information. I will not be participating socially.”

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Actor Matt Lucas took an extended absence from Twitter after he was tweeted a joke about the death of his former partner Kevin McGee by a follower. The Little Britain star posted a YouTube video on his Twitter account announcing his return over New Year’s.

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Rumor has it that Adele took a break from Twitter in late 2012 after her account was overrun with threatening messages towards her newborn son. While she didn’t post anything to her account in response to the threats, she has only tweeted sporadically since then.

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Charlie Sheen included the inspirational phrase “reach for the stars” in his goodbye tweet to his 8 million followers in July 2012, but reactivated his account a month later because he “missed interacting with his fans.” When he first started his account in March 2011, he became a Guinness Book of World Records holder for accumulating 1 million Twitter followers in just over a day. #winning.

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When she is not using her Twitter account to announce her retirement and subsequent un-retirement from acting, actress Amanda Bynes has utilized her social media to defend herself after a DUI arrest. The actress tweeted Obama to “please fire the cop who arrested me. I also don't hit and run. The end.” Bynes has a long history of abandoning, then creating new Twitter accounts and currently uses a private account.

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Lily Allen gave up technology, including her Twitter account, as a way to become a “neo-luddite” in 2009. She eventually returned to modern times and her account @lilyrosecooper, tweeting multiple times a day to her nearly 4 million followers.

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