Several months ago I noticed I hadn’t seen anything from Wil Wheaton on my Twitter timeline for a while. Looking him up, I was shocked to see he had blocked me. I had no idea when he did it, or why. They say the one sure way for him to block a person is if they say ‘Shut up Wil!’ I know I never did that. Normally I wouldn’t care if someone blocked me, but in this case it was troubling for two reasons.
First, I’m a fan. His recent roles in particular have been great. I was especially pleased to see him on Dark Matter (love that show). Being blocked by him feels a little…personal.
Second, Wil shares his blocklist. This means that anyone who uses it will block me along with everyone else he’s decided serves up ‘toxic garbage’ on Twitter.
Why did he block me? @Kittison — an egg, no less! — did some research and came up with the exchange above. I’m assuming this was the last time I tweeted at him, and the ‘offense’ that got me blocked. It seems laughable to me that this counts as trolling to him, and yet I can see now that a smiling emoji might possibly have corrected for tone interpretation.
Sigh.
The new Muppets program really was awful, by the way. The characters were unlike their former selves, and the program was not exactly family-friendly.