Twitter temporarily suspended my “Six Weeks of Rush” account, probably because of a liberal media conspiracy, etc.

Well, that was a little embarrassing. The good people at Twitter chose to suspend the @SixWeeksofRush account the other night, right in the middle of an episode recap and everything. It’s back online now, but of course it’ll take me some time to get back into the swing of things.

I’d like to be able to tell you that this was all part of some grand media cover-up designed to silence me, because that would have been wonderfully thematic. But the truth is, I just followed too many people at once. Twitter gives you the boot if you “follow or un-follow hundreds of users in a single day,” according to their documentation, and although I didn’t break that rule, I managed to attract enough of the wrong attention to earn an automatic suspension.

“Your account was caught by one of the automated systems we have in place to keep Twitter spam-free,” a Twitter representative told me. “It looks like you might have been following other users a bit too aggressively, as a disproportionately large number of the users you followed have blocked your account or reported your account as spam.”

I’ve learned my lesson, and I hope you all can learn from it, too. Although Twitter isn’t clear on this in their documentation, their vague “hundreds” figure is apparently just an estimate. They do indeed measure aggressive following in terms of blocks and spam reports, and as Nola Gurl herself pointed out, you’re likely to attract a disproportionate amount of those if your account could be perceived as partisan, politically challenging, or just plain snarky.

Anyway, I’m back! Once again, I can post lengthy daily recaps of an obnoxious, dishonest radio program, tell a bunch of people what they already know about a renowned windbag, and argue with fans who assume I’m just some elitist liberal snob.

You know, I wonder if there’s any way I can look back on this suspension as a positive thing…

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