Special Social Media Report: Last Week’s Startling Disappearance of @Round.Boys

On September 10th, all hell broke loose for 462,000 Instagram users when @round.boys vanished from the internet. The account—the preeminent purveyor of alluring footage featuring pudgy animals getting brushed, fed, and gently poked—disappeared without so much as a satisfied grunt. Gone, too, was @round.boys’ popular Twitter feed: suspended. No longer could the average browser retrieve a photo of a generously proportioned kitten, arranged as if surfing the web, at a moment’s notice. Into the abyss went easily accessed video footage of a hamster shimmying out of a tunnel, ass-first. Sibling accounts posted #freeroundboys pleas. Concerned followers took to their stories.

Where had our husky brethren, our chubby potats, our sweet, sweet smols wandered?

“This is just random deactivation and suspension. No warning, no reason. Makes no sense,” Noah Periord, emperor of the RB franchise, told me over direct message following the blackout.

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Online plastic-free shopping you say? *Adds to cart*