Comedian Patton Oswalt Temporarily Quits Twitter After Polarizing Tweets About Women's Rights
Specifically, Oswalt has been a supporter of the #YesAllWomen movement that has spread through Twitter following the shooting near UC Santa Barbara over Memorial Day weekend.
Oswalt is a supporter of the movement, but many of his followers aren't. A lot of his followers appear to be advocates of Men's Rights and Red Pill, two subcultures on Reddit and other social media sites that promote the belief men are superior to women.
Over the last several days, Oswalt has continued to support the #YesAllWomen movement on Twitter.
He also made a geeky analogy that didn't go over so well with his fans on both sides of the issue:
Following all the backlash, Oswalt wrote in a post on Facebook that says he won't post anything except promotional materials for his live shows and movies to Twitter or Facebook until September 2.
Here's how he put it:
I've become my own tyrant - Tweeting, and then responding to my own responses, and then fighting people who disagree with me. Constantly feeling like I have to have an instant take on things, instead of taking a breath, and getting as much information as I can about the world. Or simply listening to the people around me, and watching the world and picking up its hidden rhythms, which crouch underneath the micro and the macro. But I've lost sight of them. And it's because of this - there's a portal to a shadow planet in my right hand, the size of a deck of cards, and I can't keep myself from peeling off one card after another, looking for a rare ace of sensation.
...
So - I'm engineering a summer. From today, June 1st, until Tuesday, September 2nd. Radio silent. No Twitter, no Facebook. There'll be a few announcements here and on my Twitter feed - mostly for shows and some movies I'm about to appear in - but I scheduled these to drop weeks and months from now, without me having to do them on the day. The chairs are up on the tables, the floor's been swept, and I'm locking up my tiny, personal online nightclub until the leaves turn brown. If Chili John's in Burbank can thrive while still closing for the summer, I ought to do just fine.