My Twitter handle is @Ansel. I grabbed it as a username a few years ago, back when Twitter allowed you to change your username at will. My parents named me after badass photographer Ansel Adams. I like my name a lot.
But these days, I'm frequently mentioned in highly agitated tweets like this one:
HOW CAN U NOT SEE THIS ARE U BLJND OMG :(((( @Ansel effort
— jess (@hazelaugusts) April 21, 2014
And this:
“@PageToPremiere: Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace of @TheFaultMovie! (@ShaileneWoodley and @Ansel Elgort) #TFIOS pic.twitter.com/Irx9ceBntv” aww
— ☪wendy (@YeaLirry) April 14, 2014
As it turns out, there's an up and coming actor with my awesome first name and a terrible last name: Ansel Elgort. He's in the new films Divergent and The Fault In Our Stars. He's 20 years old. I checked out his Conan O'Brien interview him and he seems like a cool, if rather bland, dude. His Twitter account @AnselElgort has about 359,000 followers. So there are legions of adoring fans. He is a much more significant Ansel than I.
Hence, I keep getting tweets like this:
@Ansel WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME AND A BUCKET WILL KILL YOU AND I GO CRAZY OR NAH?
— frick (@harryosophy) April 7, 2014
Please @ansel i love you please follow
— Sonja Seeber (@sonjaseeber) March 28, 2014
Please!!!!!!!!! @ansel
— Sonja Seeber (@sonjaseeber) March 28, 2014
Like Hazel, you took my breath away.
Like Augustus, I'm just hopping (hoping) to be with you.
#TFIOSPickUpLines @ansel
— Bic✌ (@viiictorromo) April 14, 2014
@ansel <3 <3 <3 I Love You :) #cookiecake
— Okay? Okay.xx (@SMCL__1DLM) March 14, 2014
i really love you ansel @ansel
— #VoteTRIS (@littlepansycake) April 8, 2014
It goes on (and on) like that. Creeps me out a bit. I don't have time to reply to all these people and inform them that I am not Ansel Elgort, this person they've seen on a screen who they love. I don't want to follow them. But Elgort, barring a catastrophic public gaffe of some kind, seems poised to get more famous, not less.
I've added, "Not an actor. Not @AnselElgort." to my Twitter bio, but I doubt that will stem the tide. If you looked at my Twitter account for a second, you'd realize I'm not him. I am the helpless electronic object of intense, misdirected affection. This is my burden.