R74 The only thing there that's questionable is the private account changes started privately if you remember. The history is..
He reactivated it (early to mid-June was suspected) with everything exactly the same as when he deactivated back in February. It stays like that for a couple weeks, not publicly noticed.
Thursday June 24 he "accidentally" follows the Inspirational Barely Legal IG account.
Sunday June 27 he deletes all the posts, follows and followers. It remains publicly unnoticed.
Monday June 28 he changes his pseudonym to Harry Burns. The account is still publicly unnoticed.
(mentioning Wednesday June 30 is The Ho's mini lionheart emoji - the "known" beginning of Emojigate)
Friday July 2 the private account reactivation finally makes a public announcement on DL (no idea at all if it was rediscovered in another corner of the internet.
It's on this day (AFTER being mentioned in DL) that he changes the PFP. Then a couple hours later, again AFTER getting called on lazily *not* bothering to change it here, he changes the account address from _theoneandonlybillyshears_ to _oneandonlybillyshears_ as it remains to this day. Did he really think removing the "the" would make it impossible to find again? Yes he's a moron, but is he *that* stupid?
That completes the timeline, which is memorialized in its entirety in thread 15 should you want to read all of it for yourselves.
As far as whether he was trolling with it, I'm still not sure. Because the changes started before being publicly discovered. Someone would have had to have been waiting and looking for if/when he reactivated to notice the changes, so does it count as trolling if there's no known audience for him? Once discovered however, the changes are either troll adjacent, or ridiculously stupid if it isn't trolling. But I'll repeat now what I said at the time because it still holds up. . .
[quote]Now someone mentioned above how "lazy" he was for not changing the account so it "couldn't be found" again. My *immediate* thought (though I didn't specifically think lazy) as well. Ben ***ALWAYS*** changed the account every time it got discovered. It used to include the positively adorable "Please don't tag this account in photos!" because he didn't want to be found. He deactivated it back in February (presumably) because it had been found and people started tagging it after Montanagate broke. So Ben-I'm way more fucking paranoid than you can even imagine-Barnes reactivates it, but doesn't *immediately* change the account so it can't be found again? That makes NO logical sense. So. . . is he trolling the world? He *wanted* to be found again because his now well documented inner sociopath is playing with the "fandom"? He just now decides to change his pic to a heart, again along with the name change, after removing all his followers? Who is going to see he's making changes to his private friends n' family only account when he has NO friends and family left anymore?!? Moreover, why bother to *keep* it AT ALL if you erased all your posts and removed all your followers? NO ONE can see anything you do with it. Except to see that you did that, and changed your pseudonym and changed your profile pic. There's no reason to do this whatsoever. Not a logical one anyway. Unless you're just manically trolling people for daring to look at you.