A Celebrity Struggle: Staying Off Twitter, for Good - NYTimes.com

Lena Dunham announced Monday that she was no longer managing her own Twitter account.

“I didn’t want to cut off my relationship to it completely,” she said in aRe/code podcast interview. “But it really, truly wasn’t a safe space for me.”

There are many ways to say goodbye to Twitter. Ms. Dunham has chosen one of the tamest: asking her team to manage her account and interactions with her 2.81 million followers on the social media platform. In doing so, she joins Ashton Kutcher (with over 17.1 million followers) and other formerly loose-fingered celebrities who have decided that their Twitter presence belongs in more capable hands than their own.

It may be difficult for Ms. Dunham to continue to resist the platform’s call.

Just two days after the interview was posted, she clarified, through Twitter, that she continues to compose her own tweets. As she explained on the podcast, they are then posted by someone else because she does not have direct access to her account or know her own password.

While many stars have declared themselves to be done with Twitter, the service is often able to coax them back. (Indeed, Mr. Kutcher often appears to have retaken the reins.)

Some stars can barely make it a week. Nicki Minaj, for instance, deleted her account entirely in 2012 after a feud with one of her own fan sites, but returned to the service just nine days later.

The rapper’s rival, Iggy Azalea (who has been accused of following Ms. Minaj’s lead before), had a similar experience in February of this year. She came back, even after writing that “the Internet is the ugliest reflection of man there is.”

Prince, Sinead O’Connor, Jaden Smith, John Mayer — all of them Twitter quitters, all of them now busily tweeting once more.

Many who leave Twitter are provoked by a particular incident. Chrissy Teigen left after a statement about mass shootings in America caused a nasty response from other users. Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, was harassed off the platform after her father committed suicide last year. Both of them have since returned.

Those who are able to leave permanently often do so because the website begins to interfere with their careers.

Joss Whedon, the director of “The Avengers” movies and creator of the beloved “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” television series amassed a sizable following on Twitter but quit when he decided it was distracting him from his work. He described his thought process to BuzzFeed in May.

If I’m going to start writing again, I have to go to the quiet place,” he said. “And this is the least quiet place I’ve ever been in my life.”

Damon Lindelof, another writer, best known as the showrunner of “Lost,” left Twitter in 2013 and is still off.

“I’m a much happier and well-balanced person for being off of Twitter,” he told The Daily Beast earlier this year.

Louis C.K. might be the most recognizable celebrity to stop Tweeting for good. In a radio interview this year, he elaborated on what he disliked about the platform.

“Any time I tweeted anything I was like, ‘Ugh don’t like the way that came out.’ And then four and a half million people saw it! It was the worst things I ever said, heard and seen by the most people.”

The actress Megan Fox still has a Twitter account, but has also committed to leaving the platform for good. Her most recent Tweet, from more than two years ago, explains why she hasn’t come back.

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