Joffrey Lupul Quits Twitter, Causes Panic

After months of various social media drama, Leafs forward Joffrey Lupul has decided to pull the plug on his presence on Twitter. This typically wouldn’t be a story; Phil Kessel, for example, tweets about as frequently as Halley’s Comet appears. But in typical Lupul fashion, he exited by creating, well, social media drama.

Your mind immediately races to all sorts of different contexts. If you’re worried about @JLupul, you’re making the (correct) assumption that he’s quitting twitter. If you’re worried about #19 of the Toronto Maple Leafs, you’re making the (somewhat selfish) assumption that he’s been told that he’ll be traded, or that maybe, just maybe, he’s unexpectedly retiring from the game. But if you’re worried about Joffrey Lupul, human, you immediately get really worried, making the (thankfully incorrect) connection between this and something you’d see in a suicide note. Especially when you consider the fact he was tweeting about his eventual eulogy a few days ago..

For several minutes, everybody panicked in different ways, depending on which group they belonged to.

Okay, thank goodness. He’s not doing anything that involves harm to himself. That’s very, very good. He’s not harming his reputation as a professional, and he’ll still be playing hockey for some time yet. That’s cool too. But he’s leaving Twitter. That’s, uhh, bad, I guess.

Well, it’s something at least. Lupul isn’t super active, and not particularly interesting once he’s on. Not his fault, that’s the reality of most athletes. I guess it’s a shame that he won’t be favouriting people’s mean tweets any more, but at the same time, that practice encourages further cyber bullying.

In any event, it’s Lupul’s choice as to what he wants to do on the internet. But, you kind of wish the process wasn’t so panic-inducing. Perhaps he should have consulted a member of the Leafs’ R&D team for advice on how to properly depart, but who am I to judge how somebody logs off?