Comedian, actor, and artist Jim Carrey announced Tuesday that he is set to join Twitter’s celebrity exodus and shared a new animated cartoon with his followers to mark the occasion.
“I’m leaving Twitter, but 1st here’s a cartoon I made with my friend Jimmy Hayward,” Carrey said in a Tweet Tuesday.
“It’s based on my painting of a crazy old Lighthouse Keeper, standing naked in a storm, summoning the angels and shining his lamp to guide us through a treacherous night. I love you all so much!”
As Carrey describes it, the cartoon features a bearded Lighthouse Keeper who sings a folky jingle as a storm hits his lighthouse.
In recent years, Carrey has been a prolific Twitter user sharing his artwork on the site, which has often been in the shape of political satire or social commentary. At the time of writing, Carrey had 18.9 million followers and only followed one person, his daughter, Jane Erin Carrey.
The Mask actor joins a raft of celebrities who have quit the platform since Elon Musk officially took control on October 28, including Stephen Fry and Whoopi Goldberg, who announced her departure on The View describing Musk’s tenure as a mess.
A few hours before Carrey’s parting message, American musician Moby said he would also be leaving the site, citing Musk’s behavior and describing Twitter as a “cesspool of racism.”
“This will be my last tweet. Last night @elonmusk posted an alt-right anti-Semitic meme, a fake @cnn story, and an image of guns on his bedside table. @Twitter has become a cesspool of racism, anti-semitism, disinformation, and dimwitted alt-right hate, and it’s time to leave,” he tweeted.
Controversially, earlier in the day, Twitter said it would no longer enforce a policy to combat misinformation about the Covid pandemic.
“Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” a note on Twitter’s transparency pages read.
It’s the latest change under new owner Elon Musk, who has vowed to take a more relaxed view toward speech on the platform.
