The social media platform Twitter has banned an Elite Dangerous player, Tim Wellens, for writing a poem about killing Thargoids, the hostile alien race from the Elite Dangerous universe.
The poem was written as a response to another poem on the Elite Dangerous official Twitter account on the 4th of October, National Poetry Day.
Wellens’ poem goes:
“Roses are red
Violets are blue
Thargoid or foe
I will come to kill you.”
Twitter took this as a threat and banned the account.
In an interview with Eurogamer Tim Wellens said:
“I explained that Elite is a space game and that thargoids are a fictional alien species in a game, and that I never ever threatened a real person or organisation on Twitter,”
“Thargoid or foe, I’m coming to kill you, was directed to the thargoids and enemies in game.”
Wellens goes on to say:
“In the beginning I was very angry as I follow a lot of friends who I’ve known for a long time,”
“What hurts me the most however is the fact that I feel I’m judged by a computer, and I have no means to defend myself. It’s like fighting an A.I. I understand they have to use software to root out ugly tweets, but I was hoping a human being would do the investigation. It would have only taken them five seconds to see that my tweet was completely harmless – and I have seen much more violent tweets than mine.”
“Trump even threatened Korea with fire and death.”
Currently the account remains banned, despite an outpouring of support from fellow Elite Dangerous players tweeting at Twitter Support, and the fact that this ban is clearly ridiculous. I guess the lesson here is to be nicer to those Thargoids.
