Identity Crisis

This is me.

This is me on Twitter.

Me, right? And, yes, that is a smoking monkey all dressed up with no place to go on my page.

So, why, oh why, can't people on Twitter figure out that I am not who they're looking for? Examples:

At first, I thought this person was wishing me a happy Monday because I had been talking about my over-caffeination (which totally made me shaky and want to jump out of my skin and wonder how people do hard drugs). But, then I realized I did not know @AyyItsKarl. So I clicked on his name. I saw he wasn't talking to me. He was talking to this girl:

Same name, different Twitter handle. PS - if you're locking your tweets, you're defeating the purpose of this whole Twitter thing. You're better off just texting/Facebooking your random thoughts.

Next example:

These people weren't trying to teach me Spanish. They meant to send their messages to this girl:

Next example:

I investigated a little further.

Nope. Not me they were looking for.

While it's fun to see the excitement these people have for their similarly-named friends, I rarely reply to say, "Hey, dumbass! You should probably know your friend well enough to get her Twitter handle right!" In fact, I have never done that. I was trying to pull a conversation I had over the summer with some girls who said that I was on the beach in Miami having cocktails with them (while I was actually sitting in the windowless newsroom). I couldn't go back that far. I did reply to them by saying I wished I was there. The response was along the lines of, "Oh. Sorry. You're not our friend. But, you sound fun, so we wish you were here."

I know my name is not exactly unique. TRUE STORY: When I was reporting, there was a woman working for a small town newspaper in our viewing area who shared my name. She ended up putting her middle initial in her byline to try to avoid confusion. But, I still think people should be smart enough to know how to communicate with their friends on Twitter. Or, maybe that's too much to ask. I'll just keep using my Google translate so I can tell if they're spammers or just sloppy typers.