Absolutely—there’s a degree of speculation operating in all of this. However, I’d say that Hollywood Reporter piece laid bare a lot of specific frustrations with social media that one has to believe contributed to this decision.

I can’t lay claim to knowing what directly inspired his choice to leave, but I feel more confident in arguing that this overall situation was a big part of this choice.

And I think you raise an important point about work speaking for itself, but at the same time I think there’s a lot of expectation from channels and networks that figures like Lindelof will maximize their professional pull. So I’ll be very interested to know how he chooses to navigate that professional space when the time comes.

You don’t know this, you can only speculate.

“Lindelof’s departure from Twitter removes a space where he could frame his professional identity and engage with fans, which may have been useful when expanding to his first post-Lost television project The Leftovers on HBO next year.”

I think the move is a good one for an artist. There needs to be some buffer between artist and audience, and twitter is a bad temptation to forgo that buffer. Lindelof’s strategy to maintain said buffer was to refuse to answer any questions about the LOST finale, or any of the ambiguous story threads of his projects, which certainly created a buffer, but one of irritation and hatred growing from the more, shall we say, simple-minded pop culture slingers.

“It remains possible that Lindelof—like Sutter—will return to social media, perhaps around the time when The Leftovers debuts on HBO”

I am a huge fan of Lindelof’s work, and I’m hoping this is NOT the case. In fact, I think and hope this was a calculated move on Lindelof’s part to desaturate his celebrity writer persona which came about from the end of LOST, his new twitter, and his overexposure via granting interviews to anyone and everyone. I really like the guy, but I’m hoping we hear less from him personally for a long while, and let his work speak for itself.

I’ve been pondering your post, for, oh, a whole half hour, and it has provoked a few questions.

I am happy to see you consider the personal stakes for Lindelof, as a guy who happens to write TV and as a guy who may like engaging with people on Twitter as you and I do. As theorists of pop culture, when we contemplate the star personas of the famous, I worry we sometimes lose track of them as actual people (this was a particular critique of the ways scholars and others engaged in fashion tweeting during last year’s Oscars).

But then I thought about the fact that Lindelof created an account in his own name. Inevitably, any actions undertaken necessarily add to his star image. Twitter is also a decidedly public medium, which renders his engagement a text like any other, worth of analysis.

His THR post was so raw, though. Years after ‘Lost’ ended, he remains wounded. Like professors haunted by one nasty student evaluation amidst tens of glowing ones, he seems unable to compartmentalize.

Lindelof also seems like he’s not a prick. Forgive me, but I doubt anyone would describe Kurt Sutter as a nice guy. If getting off Twitter prevents Lindelof from having to develop as thick a skin as Sutter, then maybe that’s for the good. Or maybe he needs to listen to Bangerz over and over again–to become inspired by Miley as she sings over and over about how she gets to do whatever the f she wants.

Whatever happens, I hope Lindelof makes an account under a fake name so he can have fun live tweeting Scandal with the rest of us normal folks.

PS The Bieber hat riff was among my favorite things on Twitter ever.