The wrong Will Smith: Twitter users bombard video-game exec after Oscars slap flap

Take into consideration this a PSA: The owner of the verified Twitter @willsmith account is not the disgraced actor Will Smith who just resigned from the Academy immediately after slapping Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards.

The actor Will Smith does not have an official Twitter account.

Just after the actor introduced Friday (April 1) he was relinquishing his membership in the Academy of Movement Photograph Arts & Sciences, Will Smith – a podcaster, gamer and PR guy for indie sport studio Stray Bombay who life in San Francisco – girded for a new tweetstorm of commentary misdirected towards @willsmith, which he’s had given that 2007. He posted a GIF of a traveling bowl of petunias captioned, “Oh no, not yet again” (a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guidebook To The Universe).

This isn’t really San Francisco Will Smith’s first rodeo in getting confused with the actor who shares his name. In truth, his individual web-site is notthatwillsmith.com, and his Twitter bio also points out that he is “notthatwillsmith”.

The yearslong circumstance of mistaken identity achieved a crescendo Sunday, following the actor Will Smith strode on to the Oscars phase on reside Television and smacked Rock, who experienced created a joke at the expenditure of Jada Pinkett Smith. Following getting flooded with Twitter comments soon after The Slap, @willsmith posted this: “Real chat, I’m not the particular person you might be upset/delighted with. I make podcasts and online video game titles for a living. At the risk of creating folks pissed off at me instead of that other male, the entire world would be a far better place if we stopped answering words and phrases with violence.”

Even on the thread Friday in which gamer-podcaster Will Smith reiterated that he is not that Will Smith, Twitter consumers ongoing to mistakenly @ him. “Give back again your Oscar CLOWN”, anyone wrote in reply to @willsmith’s flying-petunias GIF.

Sympathising with San Francisco Will Smith’s plight, one observer commented: “By some means, however this numerous persons are not questioning why the other guy would have a image of some bearded white dude as their avatar?”

Meanwhile, not assisting matters was a tweet Sunday night by ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith – no relation to both of the Will Smiths – chastising the actor for his behavior, in which he tagged @willsmith.

“Didn’t know until just this instant about @jadapsmith getting Alopecia. She’s wonderful and great. So is @willsmith — which we all know,” Stephen A. Smith tweeted. “They are both equally phenomenal. But you do NOT do what Will did in that setting. Go backstage and manage that shit if you ought to. Terrible seem!”

On Sunday, a economic planner named George Papadopoulus – not the George Papadopoulus who served as an adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and later pleaded responsible to a felony charge of generating fake statements to FBI agents about his contacts with Russian nationals – felt @willsmith’s soreness.

“Dude, welcome to the club!” money-planner Papadopoulos tweeted at San Francisco Will Smith. – Reuters