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The unofficial mascot for the Japanese city Susaki “Chiitan” has been banned from Twitter and lost its title as “unofficial” tourist ambassador for the region.
The official English Chiitan Twitter account acted as though Chiitan mistook Oliver’s attempts to console Shinjo-kun for losing his friend as though Chiijohn was trying to steal Shinjo-kun for himself. In typical hot-headed fashion, Chiitan challenged John Oliver to a fight on April 22nd.
On May 14th, nearly all of Chiitan’s official Twitter accounts were banned- including those in Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Arabic and Turkish. Sora News 24 reports that the remaining English Twitter account made numerous posts begging for the other accounts to be reinstated.
While some outlets and individuals have theorized this may have to do with the tweet sent to John Oliver being mis-interpreted as a genuine threat, Sora News 24 also report that “Twitter suspensions have been affecting a number of entertainment-related accounts in Japan recently”. These even include the real Chiitan’s Twitter account- the otter that inspired both the creation of Shinjo-Kun and the unofficial Chiitan.
Chiitan’s staff “Team Chiitan” have even created Change.Org petition to reinstate the other accounts. After explaining the situation, they also revealed in a statement they had no prior warning or explanation since about the suspension:
“Chiitan received no prior communication from Twitter warning about Chiitan’s activity on the social media platform.
Chiitan is very saddened and quite at a loss from this particular unfortunate event.
Team Chiitan has communicated with Twitter to resolve this issue, but the un-suspending of all the Chiitan accounts have not yet happened. It has been 12 hours since the incident has occurred.
Please sign, share, and tweet this petition and let Twitter know that we all want to have Chiitan back on the internet!
Thank you very much for your time,
Team Chiitan”
Within the last 24 hours, even Chiitan’s two official English Twitter accounts have been suspended. Currently, Team Chiitan have created @HelpChiitan in English and @Chiitan7407 in Japanese. The current official English account has continued to reach out for help getting reinstated, even to John Oliver and former professional skateboarder Tony Hawk.
Japanese Mascot Chiitan Loses “Unofficial” Tourist Ambassador Status, Banned from Twitter
This is Niche Culture. In this column, we regularly cover anime, geek culture, and things related to video games. Please leave feedback and let us know if there’s something you want us to cover!
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Why would you ban such a great person....
This actually makes me really sad...
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