Social media was designed to bring people together but sometimes it does so in unconventional, unexpected, and unintentional ways. For instance, there probably isn’t much overlap between fans of independent Namibian rapper Lioness and those of the English women’s football (fine, soccer) team, the Lionesses, but many of the latter are learning about the former as they seek to congratulate the English team for their recent EUFA European Championship win. Quick recap: on Sunday, England — who hosted this year’s tournament in Wembley — won 2-1 over Germany in front of a home crowd of more than 87,000 proud crumpet munchers.
Poor Lioness, though, has been fielding many of those congratulatory tweets as fans mistake her account (@LionessOfficial) for the English women’s teams account (@Lionesses). To be fair, plenty of those are probably from people typing too fast as Twitter auto-populates the account name after the @ sign, but either way, as Lioness herself puts it: “My Mentions Are A Mess.”
My Mentions Are A Mess ?
— L!ONESS (@LionessOfficial) July 31, 2022
A quick search reveals this to be true, as plenty of accounts, perhaps in a rather un-English display of exuberance and emotion, tagged the wrong account. However, the rapper seems to have taken all this in stride, and even used the error as a promotional opportunity, reposting a video of a 2021 promo she recorded for the Barclays Women’s Super League, joking, “Maybe You’ll All Take This More Seriously Now.”
Maybe You’ll All Take This More Seriously Now x https://t.co/12c4tqS2K3
— L!ONESS (@LionessOfficial) August 1, 2022
She’s not the first rapper to deal with this problem, and she probably won’t be the last. In 2017, Compton rapper Buddy started getting tagged in photos of people’s pets after finally changing his Twitter handle to his professional name, and arguably, Burna Boy’s stateside popularity was sparked by fans discovering his 2018 song “Ye” while trying to stream Kanye West’s delayed album of the same name. Let that be a lesson, I guess; when selecting a stage name these days, it’ll apparently help to consider how likely you are to be confused for someone else.
