"Game of Thrones" haters bullied him off Twitter, but is that really what happened?

Sheeran briefly deleted his Twitter account after his cameo in the "Game of Thrones" Season 7 premiere was met with a ... mixed? ... reaction. He reactivated the account today, but for a while a couple of years' worth of tweets were gone. At this point, he still has tweets up as of yesterday (July 17) but he also posted this:

And has this as his bio:

I don't use this anymore, please follow me on @teddysphotos on instagram, lots of love x

This isn't even the first time Sheeran has left Twitter, but the last time he did so, he mentioned how he doesn't use it because people are so mean and even one nasty comment can ruin his day. So fans basically did the logic leap to assume he left Twitter again because of the "Game of Thrones" backlash -- or backlash to Ed Sheeran overload, since his GoT cameo was followed by news that he'll be on "The Simpsons," too.

Maybe he did leave from backlash, he hasn't said. But his account is still up, so he can still read the nasty comments sent to him if he's tempted. Plus, some of the tweets he reportedly deleted include the ones that were just mentioned in a Buzzfeed article titled "24 Tweets Ed Sheeran Will Probably Delete Soon," leading some fans to think what he was really doing was going through "problematic" tweets to revise history.

He's still active on Instagram, giving shoutouts to his GoT scene partner Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) and posting a cute cat video. He also posted this photo with Williams and "Game of Thrones" director Jeremy Podeswa:

A post shared by Ed Sheeran (@teddysphotos) on

For his part, Podeswa told Newsweek he was "surprised" by the reaction to Sheeran's cameo:

"He was appropriate for the part because he needed to sing. If people didn't know who Ed was, they wouldn't have thought about it twice. The hoo-ha seems to be from things that are outside of the world of the show. In the world of the show he did a lovely job, and he looks like he belongs in that world. [...] I think people interrogated it too much, they're bringing so much of his [superstar] presence into the thing which is far beyond what anybody was thinking going into it. He is known to the producers of the show and some of the cast, and he's a gigantic fan of the show."

Sheeran has millions of adoring Twitter followers, so it would be surprising if a few critical GoT tweets really pushed him off the social media site. (Especially since most of the complaints were just about his appearance being a distraction on the fantasy show.) No one should be holding out for universal popularity, especially someone who is already so readily worshiped by strangers around the world. A little bit of balance is healthy for the ego, man. Besides, without "Mean Tweets," what would Jimmy Kimmel do?

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