Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. That’s what it felt like yesterday when William Shatner, best known among his many roles as Captain Kirk, in the Original Series of Star Trek – came to the aid of Jedward, whose verified Twitter account @planetjedward, which they’d had since 2009, has been suspended since mid October.
But it’s not nearly so strange as it sounds. Shatner and the Grimes Twins, John and Edward, have known each other for several years, having first struck up a friendship on Twitter back in 2014. Additionally, Mr Shatner is known as a skilled user of the microblogging social media forum, and also for helping out others with problems related to Twitter. Not only that, he’s a mutual of some pretty big names in the Twitterverse, including none other than the boss himself, Jack Dorsey.
Jedward fans have been bringing to the wider attention of Twitter society about the suspension, which occurred when Jedward made several short “lipsynch” videos as a fan service. Rather than simply taking the videos down, or give a warning, Twitter instead decided to suspend the account. John and Edward tried to get the account re-activated, but have been foiled at every turn, with Twitter choosing to respond with automatic email replies.
Enter William Shatner! Towards the end of May he was approached by Jedward fans to help out. Amazingly he responded and said he would see what he could do:
What exactly happened to get it suspended is going to be the key whether it can be unsuspended. https://t.co/aYpk0WK0RB
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) May 31, 2018
I will ask to see if it can be restored & see what Twitter says about why. https://t.co/kv1rj3eLwJ
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) May 31, 2018
All this would have been enough – to have such a high profile account as William Shatner, with 2.58M Twitter followers, draw attention to the situation was more than a mere step in the right direction. But he is a man of his word, and yesterday morning tweeted:
BTW to the #Jedward fans Twitter is looking into the account. No guarantees but they are giving it a fresh look.
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 18, 2018
He since followed this with more replies, this time directly to Jedward, who thankfully have a side account:
https://twitter.com/WilliamShatner/status/1008756224806944768
They are going to contact you on whatever email address is on the Planet account. And it should be a real person who does it. From what I was told it can be unsuspended and they are contacting you with instructions. https://t.co/lIIW0zIQmn
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 18, 2018
Hopefully all will be well and Planet Jedward will be restored to its rightful orbit! Thank you William Shatner!
