I joined Twitter in 2009.
At the time, I was making regular pilgrimages to SXSW Interactive, and the platform was exploding. It felt like the nerve center of the internet – designers, developers, journalists, founders, weirdos, and the occasional celebrity all talking in the same chaotic stream. If you worked in digital, you were there.
So I grabbed the handle @honeybutter and never looked back.
For the better part of 17 years it just…existed alongside my career. I didn’t tweet much – honestly, almost never – but I checked it every day. It was a quiet little window into the industries and people I work with. I followed clients, designers, developers, photographers, and the occasional internet personality whose hot takes made the timeline interesting.
It was also private, which probably explains why I never managed to break 500 followers. A truly elite level of internet influence.
And yet, somehow, I still felt cool.
Recently that account was permanently suspended.
No warning.
No real explanation.
Just an email saying a violation had taken place and the decision would not be overturned.
I pushed back, of course. I filed an appeal. I explained what I do for a living – design and development. My account barely posted anything. I mostly used it to read news and follow industry people.
But they weren’t having it.
My best guess? At some point I probably retweeted a few clients celebrating the launch of websites I designed for them, and maybe the system interpreted that as promoting something it didn’t like. Who knows. The appeal process didn’t exactly come with detailed notes from the judging panel.
I want to pretend it doesn’t matter.
And honestly, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t.
But it still kind of sucks as I board a plane back to Austin, TX for another SXSW next weekend.
There’s something oddly sentimental about losing a little corner of the internet you’ve had since 2009 – l one that quietly watched the entire arc of social media unfold. That account survived the early chaos, the tech boom cycles, the political years, multiple platform identity crises… only to get vaporized in a random enforcement sweep.
What really gave me perspective, though, is realizing how often this happens to the people I work with.
A lot of the women I design sites for have had accounts disappear overnight – sometimes after spending years building massive followings and communities. Compared to that, losing my tiny, gloriously underperforming sub-500 follower account is nothing.
Still, I felt cool there.
Now I’m over on Bluesky, where I remain exactly what I’ve always been online: extremely boring.
But for anyone wondering – Honey Butter Design is very much still in business.
Platforms come and go.
Websites, on the other hand…those I can still build.