On September 25, famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen departed from Twitter with a bang. Now it appears the Netscape founder never actually left. Even though Andreessen hasn’t been tweeting himself, he’s still engaging with the social media platform’s worst feature — other people’s accounts. Gizmodo investigated Andreessen’s recent “Likes” and damn, homeboy’s been busy.
Image: Gizmodo/Twitter/FX
Image: Gizmodo
On that fateful day in September, Andreessen annihilated his thousands of legendary tweets — covering a wide variety of topics from how technological innovation helps the poors more than the elites to the upsides of colonialism — leaving the platform with the simple message:
Taking a Twitter break!
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) September 25, 2016
But how long did it take ol’ Marc to get back on the bird after calling it quits? Twitter doesn’t timestamp likes, but this is the first tweet he engaged with after September 25.
Hey @pmarca:
<Like> this tweet if you’re okay. RT if you’re being held hostage.
— Ivan the K™ (@IvanTheK) September 30, 2016
Five days after he announced his alleged hiatus, one Twitter user noticed he was still following new people.
.@pmarca, I know you’re out there – Increased followed accts since starting hiatus ?? pic.twitter.com/8UdOUXhonm
— Jacilyn (@jacilynh) September 30, 2016
As of December 2, Andreessen is following 10,800 people, which suggests he’s actually been pretty busy throughout his “break”.
But why did Andreessen erase a lifetime’s worth of tweets and pretend to take a break from the platform in September? At the time, I theorised it was because I mildly owned him earlier that day.
a pivotal moment in my career pic.twitter.com/cipCOlkyy9
— eve peyser (@evepeyser) September 24, 2016
When Gizmodo graphed out Andreessen’s likes per day, we can see he became more active after the US election. After all, the US president-elect has been using the platform to send out some quirky messages as of late — Twitter is central to America’s national discourse, and perhaps Andreessen recognises that.
But who knows, really? Maybe he just wanted to understand youth culture by experiencing new social networks. From what I hear, Snapchat is pretty hot.
What does this teach us? Twitter is a temptress, and not even the mighty can resist her siren songs.