When word broke yesterday that Twitter had suspended @bill_nye_tho, a hilarious account parodying every 90s kid’s favorite scientist Bill Nye the Science Guy, Twitter users erupted with a mix of outrage and despair. Someone even created a petition to help save @bill_nye_tho. But the mastermind behind the account, SUNY Buffalo senior Lucas Gardner, told Betabeat in an interview that even if Twitter unsuspends him, he has no intentions of reviving the account.
“I’m just going to let @bill_nye_tho be dead, whether they unsuspend it or not,” he said. “It had a good enough run, and to be honest, I was pretty fresh out of ideas anyway.” Mr. Gardner said that Twitter still hasn’t responded to his queries as to why his account was suspended.
As The Daily Dot pointed out, this isn’t the first time the account has faced suspension from Twitter. It was temporarily suspended back in July, after which Mr. Gardner tweeted–in true @bill_nye_tho fashion–, “my account got suspended for a little while but i fixed it with science lol.”
The real Mr. Nye, for his part, has not been in contact with Mr. Gardner. “I haven’t heard anything from the real Bill Nye,” he told us. “I really hope that, if he is aware of it, that he’s not offended by it or anything. I love him and it was never my intention to make fun of him.”
Mr. Gardner, who does standup around Buffalo and hopes to make it as a TV writer, told Betabeat that he started the account after a nostalgic trip down memory lane about our collective affection for the zany, bowtie-wearing scientist.
“I was thinking about how, in middle school and even into high school, even kids who didn’t care about science, and would spend science classes dicking around or sleeping – they always shut up when Bill Nye was on,” he said in an email. “Kids and teenagers loved him, and I was thinking about how funny it would be if he tried to stage a comeback for the newer, ‘YOLO’ generation.”
Since then, @bill_nye_tho has exploded to hundreds of thousands of followers, though Mr. Gardner admits it took a while to get there. “At first it was only popular on what I guess has come to be called ‘weird Twitter,’ but then it blew up,” he said. “I didn’t think it would.”
Despairing @bill_nye_tho fans need not fret; Mr. Gardner pointed us to another project of his–a Twitter account as imagined by an Ecuadorian fan of Dragon Ball Z. Not quite the same stoner humor, but it should help wean you off this sad news rather nicely.
