In the wee hours of the morning while most of America was fast asleep and I was nursing a bottle of Mt. Dew wondering why I couldn’t get to sleep, something bizarre happened to Fox News’ favorite rah rah boy, Sean Hannity. His Twitter page mysteriously vanished after he tweeted “Form Submission 1649,” deleted it and then tweeted it again several times. This set off a barrage of tweets from the curious that enabled ‘Sean Hannity’s Twitter’ to quickly become a trending topic. As of this 7:30 a.m. writing, it’s still #2.
Naturally, the Trumpettes and Russian trolls / bots did their usual routine working in sync to try to dominate the conversation. They accused Twitter of everything under the sun and whipped up 101 new conspiracy theories to explain why Hannity’s page was suddenly deactivated. Mainly this involved those participating to escape Planet Earth into an alternate Pizzagate-style reality where Twitter, Democrats, the FBI and the dreaded Secret Society were all working together to silence their favorite Minister of Propaganda. Meanwhile, non-Hannity fans were delighted he disappeared from the Twittersphere and probably hoped for the same in “real life,” yet were also perplexed as to what actually happened. A glitch? A hack? Twitter clamping down on his “alternative facts?” A conscious page pull on Hannity’s part due to him being publicly humiliated for having to admit Trump tried to fire Mueller on the air? Well, we know that last one isn’t true as he is clearly incapable of feeling shame.
Hannity’s page was finally restored after a few hours and everyone went on their merry way. We’ve yet to hear anything from Twitter or Hannity and “Form Submission 1649” remains the last of Sean’s tweets. However, there’s a peculiar, notable difference between Hannity’s pre-deactivation page and his restored page… He started with 3.3 million followers and returned with just 2.9 million after the blackout; effectively managing to shed 400,000 followers in his down time.
While perhaps just something glitchy, this still opens up all kinds of interesting questions. Why was Seannity’s page deactivated and at such an early hour? Why was Seannity suddenly purged of 400k followers? Did Twitter sneak in there and delete a bunch of bot accounts? And what is the mysterious and cryptic “Form Submission 1649?” Hopefully this mystery is soon solved so I can take a nap.