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Welp, it finally happened

Believe it or not, I’ve never copped a Twitter ban before. I’ve gotten into a few heated arguments, but I’m not a very aggressive Twitterer in general. In fact, my favorite tactic when the namecalling starts is to remain blandly polite. It drives ’em nuts.

What’s that? The tweet? It was in a thread about Lia Thompson. I don’t mind deleting it; it’s really badly worded. Shame on me.

As hate goes, it’s weak sauce.

So now, to get my account back, I have to give Twitter my cellphone number for a confirmation code. That is so not going to happen.

Comes the exploration of the free online sms services. They give you a fake cell number, you plug it in, you read the number that pops up. I’ve tried dozens of them. Either Twitter tells me the number has been used before, or I plug it in and the verification code never comes through.

I watch other people’s verification codes come through (it’s a shared number) for things like PayPal and DoorDash. I think it just doesn’t work for Twitter. But, strangely, Twitter lets you try about 20 fake phone numbers before telling you to come back tomorrow. I mean, surely the average punter doesn’t have access to 20 phones, so they must know what you’re doing.

Currently, I’m struggling with an app called Phoner that basically gives you a second phone number attached to your phone. It will forward calls and texts to your regular phone, if you like, but you don’t have to give out your real phone. And you can biff it and get a new one from time to time, if you so desire.

But I think I may have to feed it a few coins before it will let me play. I got it at the app store. It looks legit.

March 8, 2022 — 8:23 pm
Comments: 15