Joss Whedon, the director of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, has become the latest high-profile Twitter user to quit the social network.
The writer / director deleted his account last night, shortly after posting a message thanking "all the people who've been so kind and funny and inspiring up in here."
There has been plenty of speculation online in relation to Whedon's decision to close his account. Some users have collected images of abusive tweets the Buffy creator has received recently. Abusive messages have been highlighted as a significant issue on Twitter in recent years, with the company having vowed they will do more to try and stop the problem.
Others have pointed out Whedon had also been criticised by a small amount of feminist users over the portrayal of Black Widow in his new Avengers film. Some of these comments have themselves been criticised, since Whedon has frequently been praised for writing strong female character and has vocally defended feminist critics such as Anita Sarkeesian on Twitter.
Yep. There is a "Tea Party" equivalent of progressivism/liberalism. And they just chased Joss Whedon off Twitter. Good job, guys. Ugh.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 4, 2015
Whedon himself recently accused a clip from the upcoming Jurassic World of being "70's era sexist" in a tweet he later said he regretted. He told Variety, “I don’t ever say things about other people’s work that are negative. That’s bad form. It’s not what a gentleman would do.”
The reason for the account closure could be simply a personal decision to turn his attention to other things, or that maintaining a Twitter account had become time consuming. In 2013, Whedon told Entertainment Weekly he joined the social network "to specifically try to drive business to Much Ado About Nothing because I figured Much Ado needs all the help it can get. The moment I joined, oh my God, what a responsibility, this is enormous work—very fun, but it really started to take up a huge amount of my head space."
While we may never find out exactly why Joss Whedon decided to quit Twitter, we do know he won't be returning for the next Avengers film. In interviews the director has expressed some frustrations with some of the restrictions he faced making the hit sequel, with Anthony and Joe Russo set to film the two-part Avengers sequel Infinity War once they've finished work on Captain America: Civil War.
