RIP @ArianFoster (February 2, 2010 - March 4, 2013)

It all started a little over three years ago with this:

And now, after three years of deep thoughts, weird thoughts, ticket giveaways and ill-timed JPEGs of hamstring MRIs, it appears that Arian Foster's run on Twitter is over for now.

It all came down overnight on Sunday leading into Monday morning when Foster fired off the following tweets subsequent to what had been a very active night of answering people's questions and opining on everything from Tony Romo to 2 Pac:

Now, it bears mentioning that Foster has not deleted his account (375,000 followers strong) so when if he inevitably comes back to decides to return to Twitter someday, his account will still be here waiting for him, with probably very little follower attrition. (Hell, if anything, the apparent newsworthiness of Foster's Twitter exodus -- it was mentioned on the evening news on at least two local stations -- has probably further increased his following.)

For a guy who just a month ago at the Super Bowl said he enjoys Twitter because he gets to interact with fans, this was a pretty abrupt end to a significant aspect of the whole Arian Foster "experience." So what drove Foster's decision to abandon his followers? I mean, we are talking about a guy who managed to survive a Twitter war with the diabolical Iron Sheik after all!

Well, playing some Twitter forensics, it appears as though about the time that Foster was making his decision to shut it down on Twitter, he was hit with a barrage of keyboard courage by someone named "Chris Pauly" (@NickVega_ on Twitter). It started with a wise-ass reply to Foster looking for an online feed to watch the Lakers game....

...and then got very personal, with "Chris" saying a whole bunch of things about Foster's game on the football field that he probably wouldn't have the courage to say to Arian Foster's face...

(NOTE: This is easily the worst part about Twitter. Actually, this is the worst part about the Internet -- anonymous insults, recreational browbeating. The worst.)

According to apparent screen caps of direct messages (some very pointed, strongly worded direct messages), Foster did not take "Chris's" idiocy lying down:

It was shortly after these direct messages from Foster and the public tweets from "Chris Pauly" that Foster made his apparent decision to go on a brief hiatus from Twitter end his Twitter career. So now the question becomes where do we go for our forbidden hamstring MRI tweets? Who will defend us all from the Iron Sheik's maniacal Twitter rants?

The world briefly lost a Twitter superhero on Monday. All I can say now is namaste, @ArianFoster. It's been real , until such time as you choose to return to Twitter, likely in the very near future, because hey, we all love attention, right?.

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