Grmp

[marycrawford]

Twitter is now choosing to let me see about five tweets from any account before I get a "log in to see the rest" popup. I can kill the popup, but the entire page freezes so I can't scroll, anyway.

You may ask "why do you care, if you don't want to be on Twitter" but the thing is, all through the pandemic I have kept a single Twitter tab open to wenella's feed of wonderful Zhu Yilong pics and gifs and it has been a real mood-booster. Ditto for the links to fanart and Guardian-related content on twitter that I can click on, thanks to @clevermanka and @plingo_kat posting them here.

So I want to be a ghost on twitter, and clearly they don't want to let me waft around anymore. Anyone got any way around this? (I know, I could open an account and that would solve it, but that is exactly what I want to avoid.)

Related news, I can't believe that Zhu Yilong made a Lenovo ad in 2018 that looks like it was meant to snare Guardian fans, with Z1L saying "I promised you that we will meet again" against a suspiciously glowy, spacy background... (If they hired Bai Yu to make the counterpart ad, fandom would have told me, right?)

Edit: suggested workarounds in comments, thanks all! I haven't tried out Incognito mode in Chrome yet (since I use Firefox and a bunch of ad blockers, add-ons, etc) but what does seem to work is deleting all the twitter-specific cookies from my browser. Which I will probably have to do every day, then.

Edit II, brother of Edit: nitter.net is an open source front end for twitter - very low key, type in the account name you want to look at and go. Thanks to @trobadora for linking me to this!

The developer has also created browser extensions - there's the Nitter one, but there's also a more nuclear option that "redirects Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Google Maps, Reddit, Medium, Google & Google Translate requests to privacy friendly alternative frontends for those sites". That is the kind of thing I am here for.

Comments

[elenothar]

Me, stalking wenella's twitter page every couple of days? More likely than you'd think. It's always a mood boost. (I have a ghost twitter account that I literally just use to read things, but I totally understand the urge not to even concede that much because urk.)

[marycrawford]

Oh, your icon is attacking me, I am so weak for Z1L in profile (with the pony tail, in B/W, AYIYI 😻) Wenella's feed is good for what ails us, and I wish she had a patreon or something.

[elenothar]

I'm very weak for the ponytail and not very subtle about it - always nice to make other people suffer with me XD

[marycrawford]

I feel like we need to start a support group called Sir: Your Face!

[elenothar]

Membership: me, you, everyone who has ever encountered said face

[mekare]

Haha, true, also yes to the ponytail weakness

[elenothar]

See, we're a whole club already XD

(I will always be disappointed that the only show where he had the ponytail is one I don't really want to watch...)

[mekare]

Yeah, I started the show and then just. couldn't continue....

[elenothar]

I've got the unsubbed Z1L cut, which at some point I may peruse for the visuals, but I don't expect I'll even attempt to properly watch the show (sad shrug)

[marycrawford]

Ooh, can you perchance link me to that? I am also interested in the visuals, and if someone has made a folder of screencaps from it, I want to know :D

[mekare]

I think it was linked to at some point in sid_guardian....

[trobadora]

Too, too true. Also, your icon is excellent. :D

[elenothar]

I use every excuse to trot that icon out :D